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happy fugitives, they were driven out from the places whither they had fled, and all intercourse with them was prohibited. No communication was permitted with the cities, and if they had been dependent upon their immediate neighbors their citizens must have been penned up in the infected district to die of famine if they escaped the fever. There were, however, some noble exceptions to this pervading selfishness. The inhabitants of the eastern shore of Virginia welcomed the fugitives with all the warmth of their ancient hospitality. Governor Wise fitted up his dwelling-house, barns, and every available house on his estate, and cordially invited the people of the two cities to accept such shelter as he had to offer. Many crossed the Bay, and, on their arrival, found carriages waiting to convey them to the hospitable homes of genuine Virginians.

selves, bringing with them their beds and bed- | In many instances a refuge was denied the unding. On the 28th, a gentleman residing in Norfolk, but acting as clerk at Page and Allen's ship-yard, died of the fever, having been sick since the 25th. On the 31st was made the first public admission of the existence of yellow fever in Norfolk. Seventeen cases and four deaths were acknowledged to have occurred in Barry's Row. The Board of Health now resolved on preventive measures. They ordered the immediate removal of the sick and their families, the speedy clearing out of all the occupants of these wretched hovels, and the barricading of the street above and below the Row. "Too late!" the old story of epidemics. On the 7th of August a case was reported out of the infected district, and the citizens began to be greatly alarmed. On the night of the 9th, Barry's Row was set on fire and burned to the ground. Hopes were entertained that the disease would be abated by the cleansing action of the flames; but they were disappointed. The disease continued to spread. Several influential citizens fell victims to its fury.

Meanwhile the disease was advancing with great strides among the remnant of the population. On the 23d of August, the Portsmouth Transcript announced that it was compelled to stop, since the only persons left about the office were the editor and one compositor. On the 24th, in Norfolk, there were five hundred sick, and the next day there were forty burials. Several physicians in both cities had died, and others were sick, and the people looked forward with alarm to the time when they would be unable to avail themselves of the resources of medical skill. Famine, too, stared them in the face, for the scanty supplies of provisions were growing still more scarce. At this time the sympathies of the citizens of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond manifested themselves in a substantial manner. Money and provisions in ample quantities were forwarded. Baltimore, far from sharing in the panic which disgraced the neighboring towns, not only refrained from instituting a quarantine against Norfolk vessels but encouraged the citizens of that afflicted town to seek an asylum upon her salubrious hills. Numbers availed themselves of this opportunity to escape from the pestilential atmosphere of their home. The boats of the Bay Line continued their daily trips to Norfolk long after they had ceased to pay expenses, and in every boat was a member of the Baltimore Board of Health, who kept the public advised of the

The panic had now fairly commenced, and the old scenes of cowardly selfishness were reenacted. "The ties of blood were sundered; bonds of alliance were as if they had not been; friend shuddered and shrank from friend; the sick and dying lay in hopeless despair, with none to moisten their parched lips nor administer a soothing draught; while burial for the dead was with difficulty obtained." The flight became general. The population of Portsmouth was reduced from eleven to four thousand; that of Norfolk, from sixteen to five thousand. Portsmouth was speedily almost deserted. Whole streets had only two or three families remaining. Hotels and stores, even drug shops, were closed; the great thoroughfares were empty, grass grew up between the bricks, and weeds nodded over the road-bed. The markets were deserted except by a few negroes from the surrounding country, who brought in scanty and insufficient supplies of vegetables and fruit. At night the scene was even more melancholy than during the day. Whole rows of houses entirely deserted, every window closed, and emitting no ray of light, frowned grimly upon the passerby. If here and there a light greeted the eye its effect was even sadder, for it told of watchers by the bedside of the sick. From such win-progress of the fever. dows sounds of wailing floated out upon the silent air, and mingled with the long doleful howl of the dogs that missed their masters. These faithful animals seemed to have a mysterious perception of the calamity which overhung the devoted cities. Banding themselves together, they ran through the streets as though tracking the footsteps of the invisible destroyer who was devastating their homes.

The surrounding country was overrun by the fugitives; barns, school-houses, churches, every available shelter was crowded. But, alas! the panic was not confined to the cities. The country and the neighboring towns partook of it.

There remained in both cities some noble spirits who rose above the terror which had paralyzed the mass of the population. Hunter Woodis, the heroic Mayor of Norfolk, and the officers of the United States Navy Yard at Portsmouth, were especially conspicuous for their zeal and devotion to the cause of humanity. Late in August the Howard Association was organized, and its members systematically prosecuted those good deeds which they had already commenced as individuals. It was high time for the formation of such an organization, for the Corporation was virtually dissolved, the Mayor being completely overworked, the majority of the

Court and the Councils absent, the collection of
the revenue suspended, and the city treasury
locked up.
On the 25th of August the Mayor
died at his post, and Norfolk was left in the
hands of the Howard Association.

fevers were really fatal cases of yellow fever. Even yet, we do not fully know all the facts in relation to the origin and course of this epidemic. From what we do know, however, it appears unquestionable that it was imported During the first week in September the epi- from the West Indies. There certainly is no demic reached its height, the deaths amounting local cause in the neighborhood of Fort Hamto 80 in a day. A new horror was now added ilton and Governor's Island which does not exto the calamities of the unhappy city. The sur- ist to a greater degree in many parts of the viving undertakers, though working night and city of New York, and along the marshy flats day, and often knocking together rough boards of Staten Island and New Jersey. Yet it is in their haste, could not half supply the demand. notorious that the disease originated in the imCorpses began to accumulate in private houses, mediate neighborhood of the shipping, and that and a ghastly heap of bodies slowly gathered in its propagation can be traced to communication the yard of the hospital. The Howard Associ- with the quarantined fleet and with the disation sent out an urgent appeal for coffins. On trict infected by it. It must also be rememSunday, the 3d of September, fifty coffins ar- bered that the summer was peculiarly unfavorrived from Baltimore, and the next day eighty able to the development of yellow fever. There were received from Richmond. An eye-witness was at no time any long continuance of excesspeaks of "that dark Sabbath morning, when sively hot weather. The month of August, we saw forty men, each bearing a coffin on his which has the most important influence over shoulder, sent in saddest mercy from abroad, the generation and extension of this disease, and seized as soon as sent, that the corrupting was unusually cold. Yet, in spite of these cbremains of those dearest to them might be re- stacles to the spread of pestilence, yellow fever moved from their sight forever.” From that broke out near the quarantine anchorage, and time forward coffins constituted a regular item extended slowly to the cities of New York and in the supplies sent to the afflicted cities. Brooklyn. Had the weather been such as it was in 1855, nothing could have saved the crowded population of the islands about New York Bay from a most terrible and deadly visitation. As it is, the prevalence of the disease during such a summer, is an evidence of unusual activity in the epidemic cause.

The universality of the disease was manifested, as in other places, by the greater or less indisposition of those who were not considered as actually sick. Headache, lassitude, nausea, and wandering pains in the back and limbs, were generally complained of, and nearly every face wore the yellow livery of the pestilence. Ten physicians had perished at their posts in Norfolk, and the situation of the people would have been even more terrible had not medical men from abroad hastened to their relief. Sixty of these volunteers were accepted by the Howard Association, and that organization was obliged to issue a circular stating that their wants were fully supplied, and that unacclimated visitors would only furnish additional food to the pestilence. As it was, twenty-five of these strangers died of the fever.

Toward the close of September the weather became dry and cool, and there was a marked abatement in the severity of the cases and in the number of the deaths. On the 25th a meeting of physicians was held, and the 1st of October was named as the day on which the strangers would leave. The mortality will never be accurately known. Four thousand are said to have perished in both cities, forty-five per cent. of the total population, and this estimate is believed to be too low. The entire duration

of the epidemic was 137 days.

During the year 1856 yellow fever reached New York and its environs. Its ravages were chiefly confined to the shores of Long Island. Some cases occurred on Staten Island, in Brooklyn, and in the city of New York, though, according to the usual custom of a mercantile community, the presence of the disorder was pertinaciously denied. Many of the deaths reported as occurring from bilious and remittent

The sanitary history of the American continent since 1850, proves, we think, most conclusively, that we are in the midst of another yellow fever vortex, like those of 1793 and 1819. For several years to come the people of the sea-board cities of our country should be more than ever active in the employment of such sanitary regulations as are necessary to avert this plague. These, and the laws which regulate the progress of epidemic disease, will form the theme of our next and last chapter.

A GENTLEMAN OF THE JURY. MAKE it a point to respond punctually to every summons of the good-natured Commissioner who presides over that legalized lottery by which the "good men and true," who are to serve the community in the capacity of jurors, are periodically designated. Not that I prefer the stove heat of the court-rooms to the healthier atmosphere of my own fireside, or other people's public quarrels to my own peaceful private affairs; but partly because I am oldfashioned enough to regard jury duty, like every other duty, as better done than left undone, and partly because I have never yet been able to devise any excuse for its neglect which would pass muster, either in the forum of conscience, or at the bar of our city courts. quite too hale and hearty to venture toward the Bench with a physician's certificate testifying of chronic maladies aggravated by long-continued sitting and close mental application; I

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can not plead or personate that melancholy and incurable deafness of which, on the first day of every term, there are so many sad examples; I hold no commission in any brigade, light or heavy, to compel my service on parade when I ought to be in court; I run with no engine; I respect the Christian Sabbath, so that Saturday brings with it no special exemption; I am Protestant and Presbyterian, so that neither Ash Wednesday nor any saint's day, feast or fast, movable or immovable, ever affords me a religious respite; I have no friend at court, in the shape of judge or counsel, to reprieve me for a week at a time, or commute my term from the full fortnight to a half hour; nor have I yet divined the secret by which all South Street and Fifth Avenue, while grumbling with united voice about the delays of the law and the lawyers, and the degeneracy of modern juries, quietly shirk the work and leave it, like the voting at primary elections, and other disagreeable items of the whole duty of a New Yorker, to be done by less reputable proxies, rather than do it themselves.

Well! there is a popular prejudice in favor of trial by jury, and somebody must serve. It is light work nowadays compared with those good old times, somewhere about the date of the Saxon Heptarchy, when every man on the panel was responsible for the justice of his verdict to the extent of his property if not of his life. Those were the times that tried the souls of jurors as well as the issues joined between the parties litigant. Just think of having to hang for the fatal mistake of having made an honest woman of Mrs. Box, when a verdict the other way would have sent her reputation into the limbo of lost characters; or of being mulct in a cool five thousand for conspiring with eleven other men to make Twist, the Wall Street broker, pay his note like an honest debt, when in fact it had been shaved, at first hand, at the unprincipled rate of three per cent. a month!

But all this is digression, and by way of introduction to the personal reminiscence foreshadowed in the title to these paragraphs. Am I suspected by this time of being myself the gentleman there announced to the public? By no means; I have a hero in waiting, and he shall be forthcoming without further preliminary.

paper, "partly in writing and partly in print,' which I perceived at once was an invitation to the same judicial matinée to which I was making my way. In the desperate effort to extract an idea out of this cabalistic scroll at all hazards, he was perusing it upside down, with occasional references to the blank side, and having just about touched bottom in his bewilderment, he caught my arm as I passed, and arrested me with the question,

"Mein freund, wo ist der Shuperior Court?" I pointed to the shrine of justice thus designated, and we went up the steps together. Just as we entered the court-room, the stentorian voice of the clerk pronounced the name of "Hans Kraut," whereupon my new acquaintance responded, with such consciousness of personal identity and proprietorship of that monosyllabic appellation expressed in his tone, as to startle the whole assembly, and raise the eyes of the Chief Justice himself underneath their shaggy brows.

As luck would have it, the first turn of the wheel brought out Kraut's name and mine in close juxtaposition. We took our seats in the jury-box together, and on adjoining chairs. Kraut was evidently in an atmosphere of novelty. It was his first appearance on that stage, and he was so desirous of administering justice with vigor and promptness, that he was only restrained by lack of opportunity from rendering a verdict, instanter, in every case on the calen-' dar, before the first one had actually been called on. When this was called and fairly launched, and Court, counsel, and witnesses had taken one another by the ears, after the fashion of legal proceedings in general, Kraut settled himself in his chair with the gravity of a Lord Chancellor, and looked as wise as an owl.

The plaint

It was the simplest sort of case. iff was a merchant, who had sold the defendant goods and taken his note. The defendant kept the goods, but did not keep his promise to pay. Then the plaintiff sued; whereupon the defendant set up a variety of very substantial reasons why he ought not to be required to pay. What they were I forget, but they amounted all together to precisely nothing. His counsel offered to prove a variety of facts, which had nothing more to do with the case than the Proverbs of Solomon, so he came very soon to the end of his brief. There was something which the judge thought must go to the jury, and ac

to the jury, and the jury went to their room.

The last time I was captured on the coast of Nisi Prius, about the beginning of the present year, just as I was making my way toward that dingy receptacle of public servants, in the north-cordingly that something, whatever it was, went east corner of the Park, which serves in the double capacity of engine-house and courthouse, I encountered, in the middle of the path leading thither from the Hall of Records, a mass of two hundred and fifty pounds of solid Dutchman, surmounted by a very striking but not very prepossessing physiognomy, screwed up from its ordinary level of stupidity to an indefinable point of curiosity and perplexity. A glance revealed the cause of the dilemma. Meinherr was vainly endeavoring to decipher the import of one of those familiar strips of blue

Kraut marched into the jury-room with head erect, and eyes, nose, and mouth dilated. He felt now that he was in power. He seated himself for a second incubation on this very small egg, as it appeared to the two-and-twenty eyes which surveyed it in company with his two. His colleagues supposed the jury unanimous, but, for form's sake, the inquiry was put to each man, “For whom do you find?" and, as regularly as put, came the response, "For plaintiff," until it lighted upon Kraut, who, to every body's

consternation, squared off with the unexpected answer,

"I finds vor der tefendant!"

I suggested that Mr. Kraut was laboring under a misapprehension of terms, and meant "plaintiff," but, der teufle a bit, he meant what he said, and said it again with an emphasis which made the officer look in at the door, under the supposition that we had agreed and were shouting for deliverance.

But Kraut thought it was not worth while to risk his dollar, and expressing himself as perfectly willing to submit the matter to the other jurymen, I immediately propounded to them the important question upon which depended the fortunes of the litigants. There was the most surprising unanimity of opinion. Strange to say, every man of the ten had made the subject of the cane his special study, and there was not a dissenting voice. The top was brass, and the poorest brass, there was no doubt about it; we agreed in less than three minutes, and returning to the court-room recorded our verdict in favor of the plaintiff, who, alarmed by our unexpectedly long absence, had begun to imagine that he was to be immolated on the altar of justice himself, instead of assisting at the sacri

There was evidently a screw loose somewhere. Kraut must be managed, or we were in for a night session. I thought I would try the effect of a little persuasion, and edging him off into a corner, I expressed my surprise that a gentleman of such evident intelligence and sagacity as himself should hesitate in so plain a case. I reviewed the whole testimony, and tried to ham-fice of his adversary. mer into his thick head the rudiments of the controversy, and convince him of his error. He heard me very complacently to the end, and then said:

Kraut's eye was on the cane from the moment of our re-entry. A small cloud of suspicion gathered on the horizon of his Dutch face at his first glance, and deepened into certainty as he concentrated all his energies on that sin

"Ver gut-ver gut; but tell me this von ting: Vas not dat der, vat you call der plaint-gle focal point, the yellow top. The plaintiff iff, this man who hat der gold-top cane ?"

iff."

"Yes," said I, "of course that was the plaint

"Ver gut; then I finds against der plaintiff."

There was a twinkle in Kraut's eye, and a twitch in his chin, which revealed the secret of his finding. The gold top was at the bottom of his verdict. The plaintiff, like "the engineer hoist with his own petard," was to be impaled on the head of his own cane, and beaten with his only weapon of defense. Kraut was immovable. He had seen enough of gold-sticks-inwaiting in his native land, and had evidently no intention of signalizing his first experience as a juror on the soil of freedom by a verdict in favor of a party bearing so unmistakable a badge of aristocracy. Expostulation was useless; argument worse than useless. Kraut was a genuine friend of the people; a Democrat not to be bribed or lured from the straight path of equal rights by a thousand gold-topped canes. He was as firm as a rock. I spiked my battery of proofs at once, and tried a chance shot of lighter calibre.

"Certainly, Mr. Kraut, plaintiffs with goldheaded canes ought to be discouraged; but, my dear Sir, are you quite sure that in this case the plaintiff's cane was really gold-headed? He sat very near me, and, as far as I could see, it was only washed with gilt, and that of very poor quality. In fact, I will bet you fifty dollars to one it was only brass."

"So!" exclaimed Kraut, throwing into these expressive two letters-half interrogatory, half exclamation-all the surprise of which they are the vehicle for every Dutchman, high or low. "So! dat machts a difference." (After a pause) "Well, if der cane is gold-headed, I finds vor der tefendant; if der cane is brass, I finds vor der plaintiff."

"Do you take the bet ?" I quietly asked.

laid it down on the table while he paid the jury. Kraut stepped forward and took it up. He gave one despairing and disgusted look at its unmistakable, genuine, California brilliancy, and then laid it down very gently, with the air of a man profoundly conscious of the great truth that there is one thing worse than being humbugged-and that is, to acknowledge it. Just then the court adjourned.

The next day Kraut was drawn on the jury, but I escaped. That jury was out five hours, and then came in, reporting that they stood eleven to one and couldn't agree. There was no difficulty in identifying the disagreeing member. Kraut was having his revenge. So, too, during the entire week. Every jury in which this worthy enemy of the aristocracy figured was sure to disagree, or else Kraut would come in as foreman, with flying colors, and announce the verdict with an air of triumph, which disclosed the dragooning process to which, in the retirement of the jury-room, he had subjected his eleven comrades.

I was not particularly sorry when the revolving wheel once more turned out Kraut and myself together. We took the same chairs in which we had been neighbors before, but there was a sourness about Kraut's expression which gave token of rather unneighborly feelings, and I thought I detected symptoms of anticipated conquest lurking in every feature of his broad face.

What this trial was about I can not precisely recollect. It was a commercial case, and there was a great deal of evidence about invoices, bills of lading, stowage on deck or under deck, and other nautical matters as to all which it was very clear that Kraut was immediately enveloped in the densest sort of fog; and, overpowered by the combined effects of litigation and lager beer, his head dropped forward, and

he was, during the greater part of the trial, in a | the shadow of coming submission fell still deepstate of profound insensibility. er over his features.

When we got into the jury-room, however, Kraut was wide awake again, and ready for action. There was some discussion as to the rights of the parties, and for a short time there was a prospect of disagreement without reference to his inclination. Gradually the opposing views of the jurors were harmonized, and, in about half an hour, we were a unit, Kraut only excepted. He had kept quiet during the debate, but as soon as he perceived that there was an era of good feeling among his colleagues, he threw in the apple of discord in the shape of his customary dissent to the proposed verdict. Three or four of the jurors immediately caved in, and there was a Kraut faction at once; the more enterprising men of the majority "tackled" the Krauts without loss of time, and a very promising quarrel was the speedy result.

I extricated myself from the group, and taking my chair to the window, which overlooked the Park, with a prospect by no means unpleasing, even in mid-winter, appropriated the only other vacant seat for my more complete accommodation, then drew from my pocket a very entertaining volume, selected with great care in anticipation of this duress, to which I had looked forward ever since my last experience in the same room, and lighting a capital cigar, devoted myself with philosophic ardor to both these sources of consolation. As I read and smoked I could perceive that the diversion in favor of Kraut was soon overcome, and that the deserters to his standard had betrayed him, so that he was left alone in his glory again, and occupied his familiar position of one out of a dozen. The ten tried him apparently by turns, and exhausted upon him every thing conceivable in the way of argument, entreaty, and vituperation, but he stood his ground, and by the time I had turned over the thirtieth page of my book, and was in the act of lighting my third cigar, he had silenced them all, and remained firmly intrenched in his obstinacy. The consequence was that they all subsided into sulkiness, and the interruption to my quiet enjoyments was reduced to the minimum. So I sat, enveloped in smoke, and endeavoring, as far as I could, to reflect, in the perfect serenity of my countenance, the pleasing impressions of my author. The third cigar being reduced to ashes, I supplied its place by a fourth; and when that, too, had passed into vapor, its successor made an immediate appearance, and I puffed on with the gravity of a Grand Vizier.

The seventh cigar-and my train began to carry fire. I was in the midst of a graphic narrative, and really quite oblivious of all my actual surroundings, when I heard a sort of suppressed cough by my shoulder, and looking up there stood Kraut, as ugly as ever, but with premonitions of defeat unmistakably settling over his fat face. I looked at him as though he were so much blank space or chair-back; and

66

'Meinherr," said he, at last, "how many cigars have you got mit you?”.

"About three dozen," said I, knocking off the ashes of No. 7 with my little finger, as I drew it from my lips to communicate this item of statistics.

"And-you-mean-to stay out here-till you smoke them all?" asked Kraut, his fears aiding his English.

"Certainly," said I, and I gave a long and strong puff, corroborative of the assertion, and resumed my devotion to my author.

Kraut fell back. He fired one or two guns in the way of Dutch oaths and expletives, but it was evident he was in full retreat. There was presently a renewed buzzing of voices; and byand-by a bustling little Irishman, who had been manifesting great anxiety on the subject of supper, came to me, with triumph beaming in both eyes, and the intelligence that "Misther Kraat was agreeable, and that I was just wanted to sign the saaled verdict."

The sealed verdict was signed. We had been out just three hours; and as the officer unlocked the door and restored us to freedom, his face wore an expression of mingled satisfaction and surprise. It was just dusk; and though he looked hard at Kraut, the latter kept his counsel, and his countenance too, and nothing betrayed him as having been smoked into that verdict !

From that night Kraut evidently regarded me with respect, and, had we chanced to sit every day on the same cause, would doubtless have exhibited more discretion than valor in opposing my opinions. But we were not brought together again until the last day of the Term. On that day a cause was called, in which one of our leading Insurance Companies was defendant. The plaintiff was a retail dealer somewhere in the Bowery or Chatham Street, and had been burned out with a total loss of all his stock, books, and fixtures. The fire had made a clean sweep. He had a policy of insurance for some two or three thousand dollars, and he claimed to recover the whole amount. Kraut and I once more took the old seats-this time with very friendly greetings. He looked upon me as twice his conqueror-once by stratagem and once by blockade-and his salutation was very deferential. I felt that I could afford to be civil, and that I might make him a useful ally, in case of a dead lock in the jury on the impending trial. The case proceeded, and the plaintiff disclosed a very plain state of facts. There had been a fire, and he had lost every thing, and proved his loss to a penny. His principal witness was his mother, who had been the woman-of-all-work in the concern, and who was as indefatigable at swearing as she could ever have been at scrubbing or sweeping. The company made a faint attempt to prove some fraud in the matter, but their counsel made

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