Chariton courier. (Keytesville, Chariton County, Mo.) 1878-current, 1878-10-26

hung idly in the Thames; the misera-
BILE poor died by thousands, and saved
the city from the cost of feeding them,
which it never had failed to do. The
recreant King and Court might fly from
the scene of duty, but the city officials
showed no trace of fear. The Mayor
was constantly in the streets; even the
Constables and Watchmen were seldom
! at rest; many of them died. Day and
night at last, an observer relates, the
labor of burial went on. Sancroft,
dean of st. Paul's, had fled to Tun-
bridge; his canons remained, and some
of their letters to the dean still exist
the cry of utter despair.
Whole streets of houses were shut up
and Abandoned; men fled from each
other when they met; the money paid
to the butcher or baker was fumigated;
thieves wandered through the deserted
shops and dwellings, and sometimes
died there. Fearful tales were told of
nurses who smothered and robbed their
patients; of deeds of horror that were
never punished; of the infected who ran
shriehing through the streets, and fell
dead; of homes where all had died to-
gcther. August, September, passed on,
with ever-growing horrors; in Noyem-
Der, the colder weather seemed to check
the disease, and many who came back
too hastily were infected and died. At
last, in December. the great deliver
ance came; the pestilence had ceased.
A wild, a fearful joy spread over the
afflicted city; its people came back once
more to the desolate scene, maddened
with strange exhilaration. Those who
survived were crazed with the joy OF
living. Once more the great city was
thronged with the rich, busy, gay; the
Court and King came back rigid law
was passed to punish Dissenters; the
revels and crimes of Whitehall began
again, but nothing was done by Court
or King to prevent the return of that
awful scourge that had SO recently
passed away. A mfghtier power in
tervened. A new calamity seemed to
prevent recurrence of the old. The
great fire in London soon followed,
swept over the tainted ground, con-
sun1ed churches and church-yards-St.
Paul's and Ste. Mary's-shops, ware
houses, palaces, novels, cleansed many
a narrow close, purified many scene OF
horror. The city was rebuilt with wider
streets, better buildings. Perhaps its
citizens had learned neatness and pro-
priety : but it Is certain that the plague
never came again, and that by the la
bors of modern science the vast capital
has been made one of the healthiest and
most fortunate of cities.
Let ms study the science of healtk-
Let US have a sanitary party, league
for sanitary improvement. The plaques
that desolated the world in the Middle
Ages were the result in great part OF ig-
norance; they have been nearly driven
back to their Eastern source. The pest
that ravaged London still haunts the
Levant; the cholera is seldom absent
from Hindostan. The Black Death, il
we are indolent, may come again. Hap
PLY the laws Of health have been taught
in the family, the school. Education
has baffled disease in all civilized coun-
tries, and checked at least its fercest
forms. But in our New World cities we
have sometimes forgotten the lessons OF
the past. We have trusted too much to
our pure skies, limpid streams. brilliant
suns or biting frost. The laws OF health
disobeyed in New Orleans have made it
the scene of constantly recurring dis
ease. From New Orleans the pest is
conveyed to the neglected towns and
villages of the North. Who can tell
how fast it may spread in the future,
what new scenes it may visit? Let US at
least elect Mayors and Aldermen in our
cities who will study and enforce the
laws of public health, who have suffi-
cient intelligence to avert calamity,
whose ignorance will not bring upon US
at least pest equal to that of London in
1865, or New Orleans or Vicksburg.-
Hdrper'S Weekly.