The Morristown gazette. [volume] (Morristown, Tenn.) 1867-1920, 1878-10-02
Job printing dispatched neatly and
ebeanlv at the GAZETTE Job Office
THE WIVES OF MEMPHIS
New York World.

The editor of the Memphis A0aLanche
has given a mournful picture OF the con
dition of that city, moved to indignant
complaint by statement said to nave
been made in Boston by certain Mem
milan visitors who assert that the re-
ports of distress at the South are greatly
exaggerated. According to the A0aIaHefe
the hapless city has lost 1900 OF It's Peo-
ME in the course of twenty-seven days,
out of population of $4,000. IL mas
8 900 sick men, women and chlluren'
and is spending over SIC, 900 day in the
employment of 1900 nurses and 1orIy
doctors, and in supplying medicines for
those stricken with the plague ana 1000
for those left destitute by its ravages.
Within these distinctly drawn outlines
let the imagination crowd together what
images of physical and mental suffering,
seIf.sacrifce, cowardice, selishness and
Christian heroism it may, and, we are
assured. the lurid horrors of the fancy
will remain unequal to the grim reality.
In the Office of the AUGlGnche there are
only two men left out of all that were
empIoved there month ago, and they
move about among strangers FEAR
ats on every face" says this writer,
and dread on every heart. ''We work.
&C not in the shadow but in the very face
"of Death. We meet him on every
"hand and at every moment in the
"he-sses of his victims and In the desola-
"tion he has spread about US" But 1t
is not our design to make an abstract OF
the want and woe and misery depicted
in the AeaIa7cBe so much as to quote
sipgIe sentence In the account OF those
who have played the coward and those
who have done their duty, This is the
verdict of the yellow touchstone that
has tried human nature so sorely;
Parents have deserted children and
"children parents, husbands their wives,
but not one wife husband" This
simple sentence ought to make amends
for many of the sneers at women which
the newspapers have dispensed so freely.
II does not mean, of course, that all or
even a majority of parents, children and
husbands have been false, but that, while
not few of them have shirked their
duties, no wife has turned recreant. 1t
Is all well enough to say in explanation
of such fact that the sick-room is
woman's sphere and that nature has Civ
en- the sex light foot, ministering
hand, q sympathetic heart and some
thing OF the physicians courage in en-
countering suffering and danger in shapes
that are peculiarly terrible to ordinary
men; but this is merely to urge that wo-
men are good nurses. Grant that wo-
men are more at home in attending the
sick and less disgusted with the circum-
stances surrounding sickness than men,
is the little matter of awkwardness or
Sdueamishness worth taking into ac-
count in the presence of such an awful
evil as the yellow fever? When all les
ser considerations of convenience sink
In the great questions of love, loyalty
and readiness to encounter danger we
must go farther than mere adaptibility
to the cares of the sick chamber to ex-
plain the fact which the Memphis editor
has alleged in favor of wives. Let us
frankly concede to women in this su-
preme calamity superiority in the SEN
timents as well as the offices of love and
seIf-sacriice, since this deduction which
we have quoted can hardly be the phrase
of idle compliment. That physicians
and clergymen should have laid down
their lives in the performance of their
duty; that Sisters of Charity should have
moved about with their usual serenity
in the pestilence; that warm-hearted
philanthropists should have thrown
themselves into theinfected districts to
fight the fever-all this was to be expec-
ted, for the heroes and heroines of pro-
fessions, creeds or sentiments are never
wanting at great crisis. But this de-
claration of the Southern journalist