The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1853-09-01
The PestiEence at New Orleans.
Down among the Dead Men.
From the Crescent. Aug. ii


/ To verify the many horrible reports of
the doings among the dead, We the other
day visited the cemeteries. In every
street were long professions, trampiDg to
solemn tunes of funeral marches. In the
countenances of the plodding passengers
were the lines of anxiety and grief, and
many poor was festooned with black
and white hangings, the voiceless wit
nesses of wailing and sorrow. On the
one hand slowly swept the long corteges
of the wealthy, nodding with plumes and
drawn by prancing horses, rejoicing in
their funeral vanities; on another, the
hearse of the citizen soldier, preceded by
measured music, enveloped in warlke pan
oply, and followed by the noisy tread of
men under arms; while there again the
pauper was trundled to his long home on
ricketty cart, with boy for driver
who whistled as he went, and swore a
careless oath as he urged his mule or spav-
ined horse to trot, making haste with
another morsel contributed to the grand
banquet of death. Now among the stee-
Piles was heard the Ginning of bells, as of
Ghoules up there; mirgling their hoarse
voices in chorus of graduation over the
ranks of fallen mortality. Anon from
some lowly tenement trilled the low wall
of mother for the child OF her affections,
while from the corner opposite burst the
song of some low bacchanal. mingling RI
baldry with sentiments, or swearing q
prayer or two, as the humor left him.
The skies wore delusive aspect. A
boye was all cloudless sunshine, but little
in keeping with the black melancholy
that enveloped all below. Out along the
highways that lead to the cities of the
dead, and still the tramp Of funeral crowds
knew no cessation. Up rolled the vol
tunes of dust from the busy roads, and
the plumes of the death-carriages nodded
in seeming sympathy to the swaying cy-
presses of the swamp; enveloped in their
dun appareling of weeping moss-ft gar
niture for such scene.
At the gathering points carriages ac-
cumulated, and vulgar teamsters, as they
jostled each other in the press, mingled
the coarse just with the ribald oath; no
sound but of profane malediction and of
riotous mirth, the clang of whip thongs
and the rattle of wheels. At the gates,
the winds brought intimation of the cor
ruption working within. Not puff but
" was laden with the rauk atmosphere from
rotten corpscs. Inside they were piled
by flies, exposed to the heat Of the sun,
swollen with corruption, bursting their
coffin lids, and sundering, as if by phys
ical effort, the ligaments that bound their
hands and feet, and extending their rigid
limbs in every ourte attitude. What
feast of horrors! Inside, corpses piled in
pyramids, and without the gates. old and
withered crones and fat huxter women,
fretting in their own grease, dispensing
ice creams and confections, and brushing
away, with brooms made of brushes, the
green butterflies, that lowered on their
merchandise, and that anon buzzed away
to drink dainty inhalation from the green
and fostering corpses. Mammon at the
gates was making thrift outside by the
hands of his black and swearing minions,
that rendered sweet meats and cooling
beverages to the throngs of mourners or
idle spectators, who, inhaling the fumes
of rotting bodies, already ''heaved the
gorge;" while within the liking of Ter
rors" held his Saturnalia, with crowd of
stolid lahcrers, who, as they tumbled the