Before arrangements could be made and carried out, by the public authorities, to mitigate the severities of the scourge, many fell victims, whose lives would otherwise, probably, have been saved. A A servant girl, belonging to a family in which the malady had prevailed, becoming apprehensive of what might be her own fate, resolved to remove to a relation's house, some distance in the country. She was, however, taken sick on the road, and returned to town, where she could find no person willing to receive her. One of the

other, to indulge the contemptible propensity of hoaxing, told him, that a coffinmaker, who had been employed by the committee for the relief of the sick, had found such a decrease of demand two weeks before, that he had a large supply of coffins on hand; but that the mortality had again so far increased, that he had sold all, and had seven journeymen employed day and night. Alarmed at this information, the merchant and his family instantly turned back.

Several instances occurred, of the drivers of the hospital wagons, on their arrival to

guardians of the poor provided a cart, and took her to the almshouse, into which she was refused admittance. She was brought back, but the guardian could not procure her a single night's lodging; and at last, after every effort to procure some kind of shelter, the unfortunate creature absolutely expired in the cart.

Of the various incidents partaking of the extravagant and farcical, much might be related. A merchant of Philadelphia, who had been absent for several weeks, was returning to the city in the second week of November, having heard that the danger was no more. He met a man on the road going from the city, and naturally

deliver up their charge, finding, to their amazement, the wagons empty. A lunatic, who had the malignant disorder, was advised, by his neighbors, to go to the fever hospital. He consented, and got into the cart; but soon changing his mind, he slipped out at the end, unknown to the carter, who, after a while, missing him, and seeing him at a distance running away, turned his horse about, and trotted hard after him. The other doubled his pace, and the carter whipped his horse to a gallop; but the agile lunatic turned a corner, and adroitly hid himself in a house, leaving the mortified carter to return, and deliver an account of his ludicrous adventure.

The wife of a man who lived in Walnut street, Philadelphia, was seized with the disease, and given over by the doctors. The husband abandoned her, and next night lay out of the house for fear of catching the infection. In the morning, taking it for granted, from the very low state she had been in, that she was dead, he purchased a coffin for her; but on entering the house, what was his astonishment to find her much recovered. He himself, however, fell sick shortly after, died, and was buried in the very coffin which he had so precipitately bought for his wife. Another example under this class, though with one or two important points of difference, is the following: A woman, whose husband died, refused to have him buried in a coffin provided for her by one of her friends, as too paltry and mean; she therefore bought an elegant and costly one, and had the other laid by in the yard. In a week she was herself a corpse, and was buried in the very coffin she had rejected.

The powers of the god of love might be imagined to lie dormant amidst such scenes of distress as were exhibited at the hospitals, during this period. But his sway was felt there with equal force as anywhere else. Thus it was, that John Johnson and Priscilla Hicks, two patients in the public hospital, who had recovered, and then officiated as nurses to the sick, were smitten with each other's charms, and, procuring leave of absence for an hour or two, went to the city, were joined in the bands of matrimony, and returned to their avocation at the hospital. Another adventure of the same kind, was that of Nassy, a Portuguese mulatto, who took to wife Hannah Smith, a bouncing German girl, employed, like himself, as a nurse. instance of similar attachment is related as having occurred in New Orleans, when the epidemic was at its height, and the whole city was sunk in grief and mourning. A smiling happy couple appeared one morning before a Catholic clergyman, and requested him to proclaim the bans of their marriage the next day. The reverend gentleman was surprised that any

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persons should desire to get married at such a time of general misery and distress, and urged the couple that they should postpone it until the epidemic was over. But they declined doing so, and the priest, indignant at what he considered ill-timed levity, turned away, and positively refused to officiate in their behalf, stating that he was too busy attending the sick and administering the last consolations to the dying. The impatient pair next proceeded to the clergyman of St. Patrick's, who exhibited a like surprise at the urgency of the parties, and at first refused to sanction such a marriage, but yielded at last to their importunities. After due publication of the bans they were married, and retired to their new home to spend the honeymoon. In a few days, the bridal chamber presented a solemn and affecting spectacle. The dead body of the husband lay on a couch, and the young and lovely bride writhed in agony on the bed; she quickly followed him, and their honeymoon was passed in another world.

Notwithstanding the devotedness and self-sacrifice of the clergy, generally speaking, during these calamities, and the number who thus lost their lives, there was occasionally an exception. An anecdote, illustrating this fact, used to be related by the Hon. Edward Livingston, who was mayor of New York, while the plague raged in that city, and which will bear repetition: The violence of the epidemic was beginning to abate; its attacks were indeed not less numerous than before, but the proportion of its victims was daily diminishing. I had a few minutes at my own disposal (says Livingston), and I had gone one evening, in a carriage, a short distance from the city, to breathe the pure air of the country, when I met on the road, at the very moment when I was about to return toward the city, a protestant minister-married, and the father of a numerous family. He, like the rest of his co-laborers, had fled the fatal contagion. He was a man truly pious, of exemplary life, and presenting in his own person to his flock an example of the Christian virtues which

"We are doing all we can, my reverend friend. We are taking care of the sick. The physicians are discharging most nobly their glorious mission-but what can we do for men's souls? The proper material succors abound, for never was charity more lavish of its offerings; but the bread of the Word is wanting. The wretched ask in vain for those physicians of the mind diseased, whose consolations can cure the wounds of the spirit and rob death of its terrors. Well-what do you say? Here is room for you in my carriage. Come in! -the ripe harvest is falling to the ground, and there are no reapers to gather it."

The reverend gentleman pressed Livingston's hand-pointed to his wife and children who were at the door of a small house near the road-and walked away in silence. Had he belonged to any other profession, his anxiety for his family might well have excused him for sharing in that feeling of terror which, seizing like a panic upon all hearts, bid fair to depopulate the city. It was, indeed, a spectacle of sadness calculated to appal the stoutest heart-the mournful gloom of those empty streets, their silence broken only by the rumbling of the dead-cart and the driver's hoarse cry, "Bring out your dead!"-those houses left open and fully furnished, from which the owners had fled -that forest of shipping, deserted and silent as those of the western wilds,-the heart recoiled from such sights and contacts. On the masts of some of these vessels hung still the unfurled sail. On the wharves, too, might often be seen the bales of merchandise which terror had left there. There was no danger of their being carried off. Death was uppermost in men's minds; business was forgotten; the graveyards looked like ploughed fields.

number of laborers collected around some object. Elbowing his way through the crowd, Mr. Whitall found a poor laborer lying on the ground, violently sick with the prevailing disease, exposed to the sun, and suffering extremely. The crowd, though pitying his condition, appeared to be either too much frightened to render him any aid, or ignorant of how they could relieve him. But the experienced Samaritan did not long consider his duty on such an occasion. Seizing one of the wheelbarrows used in carrying bales of cotton from the wharves to the ships, he rolled it up alongside the sick man, and laying him gently in it, wheeled his poor patient to the nearest hospital, and there secured for him such attendance as finally led to his recovery.

As is usual, in times of threatened epidemic, the authorities of most of the principal cities made due provision to avert its approach, by stringent sanitary regulations, or, failing in this, established hospitals for the sick, retreats in the suburbs for those residing in the infected districts, and liberal appropriations of food and money for the thousands of persons thrown out of employment at such a crisis. In some instances, these resolute proceedings were objected to. A few persons refused to go, and one man, who had been forcibly removed, returned clandestinely and shut himself in his house; his foolish obstinacy was not discovered until he was found dead in the place he was so unwilling to leave. Several merchants, too, laughing at the precautions of the authorities, persisted in visiting their counting-houses situated in the dangerous localities; their death atoned for their rashness.

Among the women, the mortality was not so great as among the men, nor among the old and infirm as among the middle

aged and robust. Tipplers and drunkards, | as well as gourmands, were very susceptible to the disorder; of these, many were seized, and the recoveries were very rare. To men and women of illicit pleasure, it was equally fatal; the wretched, debilitated state of their constitutions, produced by lust and excess, rendered them an easy prey to epidemic disease, which very soon terminated their miserable career. A vast number of female domestics likewise fell victims.

Dreadful was the destruction among the poor; indeed, it is computed that at least seven-eighths of the number of the dead were of that class. The occupants of filthy houses severely expiated their neglect of cleanliness and decency. Whole families, in such houses, sunk into one silent, undistinguishing grave. The mortality in confined streets, small alleys, and close houses, debarred of a free circulation of air, greatly exceeded that in the large streets and well-aired houses.

Of the committee appointed in Philadelphia for the relief of the sick, it is related by one of their number, as a fact of peculiar physiological interest, that several of its members declared that some of the most pleasurable hours of their existence were spent during the heighth of the fever. They were released from the cares of business; their committee duties fully occupied their minds, and engrossed their attention for the entire day; they went to the state-house-the place of meeting-in the morning, after an early breakfast; took a cold collation there at dinner-time, the materials of which were constantly spread on a sideboard; and there they remained till night, when they returned to their families; custom robbed the situation of its terrors. The only interruption to this state of their feelings, arose from the death of some friend or intimate acquaintance, or of some person whom they had perhaps seen alive a few hours or a day before. But even these sad impres

sions, though for the time strong and afflictive, soon wore away, and the tranquil state returned.

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Empiricism and quackery were not inactive, even in times like these; and the cholera was no exception among those "ills to which flesh is heir," for the cure of which charlatans had their "unfailing specific." But of all the nostrums thus brought forward, the "Vinegar of Four Thieves" was the most universal. A story was tied to its tail which gave popularity: Centuries ago, a dreadful plague raged in Marseilles. The people fled; the city was visited by no one except four thieves, who daily entered, robbed the houses, and carried their plunder to the mountains. The astonished citizens, who had hid themselves in the dens and caves of the earth, for fear of the plague, saw them daily pass and re-pass with their ill-gotten gear, and wondered most profoundly why the plague did not seize them. In process of time, however, one of these thieves was captured; they were just going to break him on the wheel, when he said if they would spare his life he would teach them to make the vinegar of four thieves, by means of which they had escaped the plague when robbing the city, a request which was granted. The "secret" thus imparted, modern quacks claimed to make use of in the preparation of a panacea for the cholera! Of course the venders got rich, for, during the epidemic, multitudes credulously believed in the efficiency of smelling thieves' vinegar, and treated their noses accordingly.

Terribly as some of the cities of the United States have suffered from epidemics, they bear no comparison in this respect to the devastations by cholera in the cities of London and Paris,-in the latter of which, with true French sensibility, the people have erected one of the finest monuments commemorative of the unfortunate victims.