Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1884-09-19
Cholera Panic.

Southern Ia es, eve if they do not
feel pain mere than the Northern-w which
in Europe they seem to do yield to the
human dislike of it much more lv.
They cultivate self-pity rs essential to a
kcen perception of life, and consider
sloicism as regards the expression of
suffering, as evidence of insensibility.
Their whole literatg rs acknowledges a
liability to tears which Inglishmcn do
not feel. and to expressions of ~self-re-
garding emotion which seem to the
harder races childish. Then, no doubt,
the s%outherners think precautions legi-
innate which Ilnglishmcn do not. The
Southerncr thinks more OF the duty of
protecting his family, and less of his
duty to the remainder Of mankind,
whose suffering, indeed. if it protects
himself, he regards with something of
Gallon ness. An Englishman hardly
knows how to bear the suffering 1nt1ict-
ed OF others by forciblc isolation, even
if isolation is directed against q disease
which often begins with death. He
feels as ii he might have helped to
cause it, and listens, with an inner APP
prevail to the argument-which is we
believe, quite sound-that a quarantine
lazaretto is often probably always, a 20
Gus and generating II OF the disease.
The congregation of the partially IN
fected triples the strength OF the infec-
ton. The callousness of the East to
Others sutlcrings does not, it is true,
extend to Southern Europe; but sym
pathy is not vet perfectly developed.
We see this every week in the different
treatment of animals, and the almost
entire absence in Italy OF the scmi-re-
ligious akhorrence which exists in En-
gland against the inllicticn on them of
needless pain. But the main cause Of
Che difference apart from the differ
ence i'll his attitude toward religion--is,
we conceive, the segregativeness of the
Englishman, the disposition he has
cultivated in himself to be himself, and
not Weld to the c%ontagion of emotion.
He likes q separate compartment even
when he is frightened. He is himself
by himself there in his separate house,
and is not Il member of q crowd, talk
ING, cX~agyefating, communicating fear
by contact and unreasoning discussion.
We all know how a crowd can cover.
and shrek. and fly, though each indi-
yidual is brave-remember the scene in
tHi hilS HcttpCl d. ' lCuuu SulllC y CuFS
ago-and in these Southern cities every
one is a unit in q crowd, accustomed to
]gregarious out-of-door life, hab-
ituated to respect neighbors' opinions,
unlaught to consider that he must, as q
self%-rospecting human being, be
in all matters not settled nv law his
own guide and master. He has sought
help from his fellows, from their ideas,
their sympathy on certain sub Gets, all
his life; and when they get frightened
he gets frightened, too, with Il flight
which, like that Of Il crowd in a theater
on fire, shortly develops into u mania of
selfish panic. In that horrible scene,
the burning OF the great theater of
Vienna, only n man retained reason
enough to remember that the hot
smoke which was choking all around
must, by the law OF its being, rise. He
threw himself under the benches, OF.
dered his sister to lie down. too. and
both were saved. The rest flung them
selves, like wild animals III terror, into
passages already blocked by impassa-
bic heaps Of dead. The Marseillaise or
Neapolltan lives always in a theater,
end, like the member of a packed au-