The Haunted Homestead: A Novel

by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

Truly, the poor young creature needed all this faith to enable her to bear the troubles that were, and those that were to come. She carried little Coralie back to her own poor room. She sought out what plain sewing and clear starching she could get to do in her own home; but this was very little, now that so many of the ladies and gentlemen among whom she hoped to get employment had left the city for the Northern watering-places. It brought her a very scanty income; and as, out of this, room rent, fuel, light, food, clothing, medicine and other incidental expenses had to be paid, and as, besides, she would not suffer little Coralie to want any comfort, or even any luxury, that she could procure for her by her own exertions and self-denial, it followed, of course, that she herself went without a sufficiency of the real necessaries of life; and so, privation being added to her other ills, accelerated the decline of her health.

Valentine could only come to see them once a week. He would come Sunday morning, spend the day in nursing his darling, tear himself from her clinging baby arms, and return, almost broken-hearted, at night.

This was the condition of things when the yellow fever made its appearance at M——. This was nothing new—the pestilence was no stranger, it was an annual visitor at M——.

But this summer the fever appeared in its most terrible aspect, with all the malign, virulent and fatal characteristics of the plague.

I am not about to harrow your feelings or my own with any minute details of the misery that ensued as the pestilence advanced; of the physical agony, from pain, fever, thirst and famine; of the wretchedness, from bereavement, poverty and desertion; of the mental anguish, from terror, grief, horror and despair. The pestilence brings in its dread train almost every form of physical and moral evil; at the same time, providentially, it calls forth to combat these the most exalted virtues in the human character. You have only to call to mind the ravages of the yellow fever throughout the South in the past to estimate the horrors of the pestilence at M——. The people by hundreds fled the city; those that remained, by thousands died.

The population, reduced to less than one-half, consisted chiefly of the poorer classes, who could not get away, and of those heroic souls whom a high sense of Christian duty or simple humanity had retained in or brought to the scene of misery.

A dense, copper-colored cloud hung low, like a pall, over the plague-stricken city; its air was considered deadly to the newcomer that breathed it.

All intercourse between M—— and the surrounding plantations was interdicted. The greatest anxiety was felt by the planters, lest the fever should break out in their families, or, where it would be more likely to make its first appearance, among the slaves; the greatest precautions were taken to avert such a dread misfortune. The masters and their families confined themselves strictly to their own domains, and the slaves were positively forbidden to approach the city, or even the highways leading thitherward. As many of the neighboring negroes had friends or relatives living in the city, and as their affections are known to be rather obstinate and daring, to insure safety, a voluntary police was organized by the planters, whose duty it was, in turn, to guard the highways, and see that no negro passed without a written permit from the master or mistress.

Preventives of disease and disinfecting agents were diligently sought after. Alcohol, in the form of wine, brandy and whisky, was supposed to be a sovereign safeguard against the pestilence. I do not say that it was laid down as a medical dogma that an habitual inebriate enjoyed immunity from contagion; but I do say, what will probably shock my temperance readers, that all persons were counseled by their physicians to keep themselves always slightly under the influence of alcohol, so long as the pestilence should last. And most people took the advice, finding, at least, something in the half-stimulating, half-stupefying effects of liquor to brave or dull the sense of danger. Wine and brandy were freely used in the planter's family; whisky was freely circulated among the negroes of the plantation. Some among them of the Methodist persuasion and the temperance society demurred at breaking their pledge; but even these, when made to understand that the whisky was to be taken as medicine, by the advice of a physician, felt their consciences set at rest upon the subject, and never was doctor's stuff swallowed with less repugnance than their grog was taken, three times a day.

Valentine held to his principles; he would not break his pledge. In vain for a long time his master, and even his mistress, remonstrated with him.