The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1878-11-15
NEGOTIATIONS AT MEMPHIS.
Memnhis Annual

memphis Appeal
A few more days and the $4,000 refu-
gee Memphians, who are scattered over
the Union from the Atlantic to the Pa
eific and the lakes to the Ohio river, will
return to their homes They will be
welcomed by few, very few, the surviv-
ors of what must pass into history as the
great plague of 1878. They will have
many questions to ask, and will look in
vain for friends who have long since
been mustered with the dead Nearly
1000 of their fellow citizens, counting
those who have died far from home and
friends, have fallen victims to the
scourge, among them men and women
who were of the most valued of our pop
ulatiOn. Men and women who by their
industry, talent and energy, and force of
those virtues the good prize most, had
won for themselves a recognized place
in every avenue of industry and in so
ciety. Preachers and priests who min
istered at affairs now desolate, who were
the exemplars of an earnest piety and
the leaders of christian hosts, are 'silent
now forevermore." Many of the coun-
sellers, guides and advisers of the coming
generation who, in all the occupations
of life were locked up to with pride,
have joined the ''innumerable throng"
Hundreds, too, of the honest poor, the
patient multitude who bear the heat and
burden of the day, will be missed, and
none will be able to tell more of them
than that they have passed away, have
laid down the weary load of life, have
ceased to struggle and are at rest Chill
dren will return to their schools and
call for loved companions who can no
longer hear the summons, and the ser
want will ask for the master, now dumb
and IN death. Day after day will reveal
to the returned absentee the dreadful
widespread destruction of life, and per-
haps, after months of inquiry, the full
effect of the visitation will dawn upon
him as we know it who have withstood
it face to face. Then the fortunes of sus-
pense he himself endured will dwindle
to nothing, and the plague will reveal
itself in all its force as warning against
the Indifference and reckless disregard
of health and life that have hitherto
characterized us. The many hundred
orphans, the helpless widows, and the
men who walk our streets in mute de-
spair, all that is left of once happy
households, will heighten the sad pic
ture, intensity its gloom, and perhaps
quicken the impulse for prompt reform
which should be result, which must be
result if we would avoid a repetition
of the sad experiences of the past three
months. We must have sanitary reform
we must have the Nicholson pavement
taken up this winter whether we can re-
place it or not; we must sewer the bay.
gu, and we must establish health board
on basis so strong that it can enforce
its own DEGREES through the courts, and
compel obedience by poor and rich alike
to the laws, the disregard of which has
cost US SO much sorrow. If this is not
done, recurrence of the plague is only
a question of time, and another such
visitation means not only the death Of
Memphis. Life is too short, at best, tc
be jeopardized even every five or twenty
five years by the yellow fever, and nc
prospects, however f1attering, will repay
the losses in trade which our merchants
and business men have this fall beer
forced to bear.