ice, let me tell you. All day long, except in days of great drought, the slimy old wheel clacks round and round, and clouds of white dust fly before the doors, where corn enters and flour comes out. For old Miller Burnie is an industrious man, who works through rain and shine, and folks in the neighborhood say that pretty flaxen-haired Mary Burnie will have a nice penny when he dies. Oh, pretty, winsome Mary Burnie, if ever there was the type of a merry miller's daughter, it is you! The clack of the mill on summer days is not more cheery than your voice, and the young fellows that toil among the sacks with powdered jackets and floury faces, would, any one of them, leap into the mill-dam and take their chances under the wheel for one glance from your bright blue eyes. But Mary Burnie, when she trips down to the mill from the snug farm-house on the heights, does not care to look much among the dusty jackets and floury faces, for her eyes are always bent straight upon the little shed where Miller Burnie has his office, and where his gay young foreman, Tip, keeps his books. It has been long a settled affair between Tip and Mary. They arranged it between themselves one day returning in the wagon from camp-meeting, and the next day Miller Burnie was notified of the fact by his dutiful little daughter. But I am inclined to believe that the Miller knew all about it months before that, for he did not appear in the least surprised, and only laughed and said, God be with them! moonlight night, the young lady had tolerably good grounds for her belief. For Tip, I grieve to say, was a young man of a facile disposition, and something like a privateer, was willing to sail under more flags than one. And Nellie Bryce was one who was not to be baffled with impunity. She was a strong-hearted, strongminded woman, full of fierce passions and unrelenting resolves, and her hates and resolutions were both equally strong. She hated poor Mary Burnie for taking her lover from her, and she resolved to be revenged. There was no mistaking it-although Mary Burnie did her little best to mistake it-there was no mistaking it, but of late Tip Clarke was changed. He had grown⚫moody and sullen, he whose face used to shine with perpetual sunlight, and he no longer seemed to take the same pleasure in gallanting pretty Mary Burnie on Sundays in his wonderful green coat and purple vest. Nay, even once or twice he had come home with a thick voice and flushed countenance, and Mary had heard him out on the stoop with his companions blaspheming with a drunken tongue. Poor thing! she suffered very silently, but suffered none the less. Telling no one, not even her old father, but wasting on Tip a whole mine of love, which the more she bestowed upon him, the more morose and sullen he became, as if he did not care for it, or felt that he did not deserve it. Mary moped and grew pale, but said not a word of her sorrow to Tip, though she could not help noticing the difference in his air when he So from that day forward, on all Sundays walked beside her, and the way in which he and holidays, Mary was splendidly gallanted ev- avoided her glance; he who used to spend holiery where by Tip, who, in a short-waisted green day hours looking into her eyes. She was percoat and purple-flowered waistcoat, cut so mag-plexed too, by the strange ways of Nellie Bryce, nificent a figure that half the young millers had like to die with envy. Things went on gallantly with the pair for some months. Tip was the best of lovers, the most exemplary of foremen, and poor, fond, bright-eyed Mary Burnie almost doubted if there could be a heaven happier than the life she led by the calm Passaic. She was not clever, to be sure, like Nellie Bryce, who had received a New York education, and could talk French and play on the piano, but she was satisfied in her innocence, and the certainty that the sun-burned, little-waisted, handsome Tip, loved her better than any thing in the world. Very few people can be worldly happy without causing somebody else pain. Our extra good fortune has generally been subtracted from some one's total of joy, and while we laugh and snap our fingers over the legacy or the love, we never think of the neighbor who is mourning perhaps for both. Miss Nellie Bryce did not behold unmoved Mary Burnie's conquest of the gallant Tip. She had thought that her own varied accomplishments, the "extras," in fact, of a fashionable boarding-school, had effected an impression on that gay youth's heart; and, indeed, if Master Tip could remember all he said on one certain who, when she met her, laughed in her face with an expression of mingled pity and scorn. Mary shrank from this bold girl, and passed with lowered eyes when they met. One evening, in the months when autumn was making his fire in the woods, and the crests above Burnie's Mill were blazing with scarlet foliage, Mary Burnie walked, one Saturday evening, as the dusk fell, down by the silent mill, and out on a little tongue of land that jutted into the river a little above the dam. It was a favorite spot with her for such innocent musings as she indulged in. Poor innocent bird! she had but a limited range of thought. What Tip said and did, and whether he would like her in her new bonnet. But then her love was so good and pure, and her heart so tender, that one would scarce wish that she had been taught the "extras" of Madame Cancan's establishment. It was a quiet, pretty spot, that little tongue of land on which Mary Burnie loved to dream. A thick brush of sumach and sassafras trees, with here and there a Rose of Sharon, covered the soil, and dipped the tips of their branches into the stream. There were paths worn through the underwood by Mary's tiny little feet, and the cover was so thick that the sweet bird might nestle there all day long, and one pass within | to utter it. At last old Miller Burnie, choking a few feet of her and be none the wiser. On the evening in question, however, her musings in the sumach grove were of a sadder nature than usual. Her heart instinctively seemed to prophesy disaster, and more than ever she felt that Tip Clarke was changed to her. She seated herself in a clump of bushes, and sighed and sorrowed as the stream stole by. Presently it seemed to her that she was not quite alone in her retreat. Voices, muffled by the intervening leaves, struck on her ear, and, alas! it seemed that both were familiar. She listened, and ah! what ears love has, when it scents misfortune! "But you love her still, Tip. I know it. You have lied to me as to her, and I will not be your dupe." "On my soul, Nellie, you wrong me. Let this kiss prove it. I only wait for some opportunity to rid myself of this engagement. It was a passing fancy. I am not fit for her, or she for me. I feel ambitions stirring within me that she could never sympathize with or gratify. I want a woman who can aid me in my struggle with life, not a clog to chain me to a wretched farm and a crazy mill. Now you-" "I! I will go with you out into the world. We are both clever, Tip, you and I. We will, together, conquer fortune. A man who has a wife that comprehends him, has more than half won the Battle of Life. But swear to me that before next Sunday you will break off this engagement with Mary Burnie." "I swear it, Nellie Bryce. I swear it by all that I hold sacred. By my old mother's gray hairs!" A kiss-a long, long kiss came fluttering through the leaves, and the voices faded; and a white, white face, that had been buried in the grass as if it would have sought a living grave, rose up, and there never on earth was seen a countenance more convulsed with sorrow than that which Mary Burnie upturned to the rising moon. 66 "Where is Mary? Winsome, pretty Mary Burnie ? She is not at home; she is not at the mill; the neighbors know naught of her. Where is blue-eyed Mary Burnie ? The questioning echoed through the mill, and across the moonlit fields, and Tip's face grew pale as the hours went by and the cries of the seekers were unanswered. The old father -old Miller Burnie, with his gray locks floating in the night air-ran here and there calling his daughter. The mill-men, who lived close by, divided into searching parties, and sought every where for the lost child. Even hardhearted Nellie Bryce, as the time went by, felt an unwonted pang in her heart, as if she presaged some terrible disaster. Mary was not to be found. They had sought through loft and garret, and mill and woods, and yet she was not found. All thoughts centred on one awful suggestion, yet none dared his terror with a strong hand, said, bravely, "Boys! let us drag the mill-pond." The whole village crowded on the dam to watch. The light of torches flashed over the water, mingling with the sad moonshine, that seemed like a sorrow that could not be driven away. Old Burnie stood in one of the boats, pale but stalwart, and with voice and action directed the throwing of the nets that each time came up empty, with a "God be thanked!" from all on shore. "She can not be here!" murmured the old father; "there is not an inch of the place unsearched." Suddenly a loud shout arose from the milldam; a wailing shout, that told its tale. Not the triumphal jubilation of danger passed, but the cry of terror for death encountered. There was Tip stooping down over the black, slippery logs, and immediately under these rose out of the water a great white swash of garments, and then a pale, discolored face floated into the mingling torch-light and moon-light. Poor Father Burnie fell in the boat like one dead, and hard-hearted Nellie Bryce turned away, and walked, sore-hearted, homeward. They carried Mary Burnie home-no longer pretty, winsome Mary, but livid and discolored -and the village gossips guessed that she had missed her footing, and so fallen in. But two people guessed better than that; and Tip, who found a handkerchief, marked with her initials, in the sumach clump, and Nellie Bryce, who saw him find it, knew that they had murdered that gentle heart. REC THE GREAT EPIDEMICS. ECENT events have invested this pestilence of the warmer regions of our country with new and terrible interest. We have seen it marching northward with steady pace, seizing upon city after city in its path, and ruthlessly devastating each town which it had stormed. The wail of the mourners has scarcely died out of our ears; the gloom of the funerals still shadows our hearts. We have gazed sadly and helplessly at the doomed cities, while they lay swooning in the deadly embrace of the merciless pestilence. Like all other epidemics, yellow fever hides its origin in the mists of the past. These giant devastators of nations have had no chroniclers to record their birth and early history. Nursing their tremendous potencies in some obscure corner of the earth till they have arrived at adult vigor, their assault is always as sudden and impetuous as that of the hurricane. Some physicians imagine they can find this fever described in the writings of Hippocrates, but they forget that the peculiar symptoms on which they rely to establish the identity-black vomit and yellowness of the skin-are by no means peculiar to the disease in question, but may be, and have been found attendant upon quite a variety of acute and chronic disorders. The prevalent opinion among those who have investigated the subject is, that the disease is of modern origin; and some facts seem to connect it mysteriously with that dark blot upon the world's commerce, the Slave-trade. It certainly made its appearance simultaneously with the inauguration of that infamous traffic, and some of our Southern physicians are convinced that it, like the blacks, was imported from Africa. city it was believed to be imported from Martinique, by the fleet under Admiral Wheeler. Since then it was unfortunately too well known to our ancestors over the whole Atlantic coast. Numerous epidemios of it have been recorded by our earlier medical writers. Their accounts, however, must be closely examined, as this disease and bilious fever were then almost universally, as they are now often, confounded. Many of the so-called epidemics of yellow fever were only high grades of bilious fever, occurring in an uncommonly unhealthy autumn. Such, for example, was unquestionably the so-called yellow fever of Virginia in 1741-2. With all these allowances, however, we shall find that this malignant pestilence was any thing but uncommon in our growing seaports during the eighteenth century. There is a marked peculiarity which distinguishes yellow fever from the other epidemics which we have been considering in this series of articles. Plague, we have seen, has ravaged the earth from the torrid sands of Africa to the icy mountains of Norway; cholera has stricken down its victims alike on the steaming deltas of the tropics and the cold plains of Asiatic Russia; but yellow fever is essentially a disease of hot climates, and is consequently confined to a particular zone. It requires a certain amount never prevail where Indian corn will not ripen. Nor does it only haunt a particular zone, but a special portion of that zone. It is confined to the neighborhood of the hot coasts of the Atlantic and of the rivers which flow into it. Bilious fever, and the pernicious and congestive varieties of the paludal fevers, prevail alike in all the hot regions of the world, but yellow fever infests a limited portion of the lands "too near the sun." While it has ravaged repeatedly the western coast of Africa, Spain, and Portugal, it has never made its appearance in the Levant or on the eastern coast of Africa. While the islands of the Atlantic have over and over again been swept by it as by a tornado, the archipelagoes of the Pacific have never heard its name. However that may be, we have no satisfactory evidence of its existence till near the middle of the seventeenth century, although an attempt has been made to show that the companions of Columbus suffered from it. The sallow hue of those who returned, the suddenness of the seizure, and the rapidity with which the disease ran its course, are the only facts relied on to establish this opinion. The ordinary diseases of the climate, however, are amply sufficient to pro-and duration of heat to awaken it to life, and can duce sallowness, while the malignity and speedy fatality of the disorders which affected the earliest European visitors to the shores of this Western world, excite no astonishment in the mind of the physician who has seen and treated the terrible congestive fevers of our Southern States. As far as our knowledge extends, Père Dutertre is the earliest writer who can be said to have alluded to this frightful scourge of the warmer shores of the Atlantic. He saw it in 1635, in the Antilles, and expressly tells us that before that time it was unknown in those islands. He called it Coup de Barre, in allusion to the severe muscular pains which accompany it, and which could only be compared to heavy blows. He also alludes to the yellowness of the skin, and believes in the importation of the malady. In 1647 it was in Barbadoes, whence it spread It loves the haunts of men, frequents cities, to other West India islands. Père Labat, on garrisons, and ships, but never gets far from the landing at Martinique, in 1649, found it raging sea-coast, except along navigable rivers. Only there. The monks in the convent of his order in violent epidemics is it wont to scourge rural suffered severely. He says that he had it twice populations, and has never succeeded in penein his own person, and speaks of those scenes trating the heart of the continent. It thus parwhich have since his day become too familiar to takes of the nature of both endemic and epiAmerican medical men-the bleedings from the demic diseases. In some of the cities of the mouth, nose, and stomach; the "walking cases" tropics it is rarely or never absent. In highdropping dead in the street, and other charac-er latitudes, as in New Orleans, Mobile, and teristic phenomena which we now witness so Charleston, it is frequently present, but does often in New Orleans and Charleston. He tells not prevail, as a matter of course, every sumus that it was first introduced into Martinique mer. Farther north, it is only an occasional by a ship-of-war, the Oriflamme, coming from visitant, and always epidemic. A marked difSiam, which contracted the disease by touching ference exists between the common and the epiat a Brazilian port. Hence one of the numer-demic forms-so striking, indeed, that some ous aliases of yellow fever, Mal de Siam. The have considered them as two distinct diseases. earliest epidemic in the territory of the United Physicians, who have seen both forms, recognize States occurred in 1693, at Boston, into which the deadly epidemic variety at once, and can almost predict from the first case the probable | of the presence of a morbid element to which extent of the visitation. they were unaccustomed. Chisholm traces the subsequent frightful epidemic which so severely scourged the United States and the West Indies to this importation. This has been stoutly denied, and the whole subject will be discussed in a future article. The most terrible of these visitations of yel Those who like to trace coincidences, have not failed to point out that epidemic yellow fever moves in cycles of from fifteen to thirty years. Thus, in 1762 the disease prevailed in Philadelphia, but did not visit that city again till 1793, thirty-one years later. At this time there was, as we shall presently see, a general activ-low fever in that pastilential year was the wellity of the cause of yellow fever. Thus, in 1791 known epidemic in Philadelphia. Dr. Chisit was in New York, in 1794 in Baltimore; and holm was of the opinion that the disease was it continued to rage, summer after summer, imported into that city from the West Indies; among the different cities, till 1804, when it sub- Dr. Rush, as we shall presently see, attributed sided, to break out again in 1819, fifteen years its origin to the effluvia arising from some damlater. This period of activity lasted till 1824; aged coffee. In deciding the question, it would and again, in 1854, thirty years later, we have be necessary to know whence this coffee came, had it on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. a point upon which we have been able to learn As our space is limited, we must confine our-nothing whatever. selves to the account of a few characteristic The situation of Philadelphia is known to epidemics. The first which will attract our at- most of our readers. It lies upon a low and tention is that which revolved around the pesti-level tract between the Delaware and Schuylkill lence of 1793 in Philadelphia. The origin of this well-known epidemic is still in doubt, although it has been discussed by some of the most able of medical controversialists. Without committing ourselves to any theory of its origin or spread, we give a brief history of the pestilence. rivers, and the disposition of its authorities to make streets with very low grades, adds to the natural difficulty of ventilation. Hence, it is one of the hottest cities of the Atlantic coast, the range of the thermometer being usually seyeral degrees higher than in Baltimore, which is one degree of latituds further south. Devèze, In April, 1792, the ship Hankey sailed from the French physician who had charge of the England with more than two hundred emigrants hospital at Bush Hill, complained that the heat on board, for a new settlement at Bulama, a was more oppressive than in his former home, fertile island on the west coast of Africa, op- St. Domingo. The wharves, being built in posite the mouth of the Rio Grande. There slips, included water which was cut off from the was no accommodation for them on shore, so current of the river, so that the filth which was that they were obliged to make the ship their brought in by high tide remained there. Chips head-quarters during their stay of several months and all sorts of vegetable matter slowly sunk to at the island. A fever soon broke out among the bottom and mingled with the mud, where, them, and became extremely malignant. No under the influence of a burning sun, they slowattention being paid to cleanliness--the clothes, ly putrefied and sent up deadly gases into the bedding, etc., of the sick and dead being allowed air. Below the city were extensive marshes, to remain on board-the fever was so fatal that and around it numerous pools left by the rewhen the time for which the ship had been char-moval of clay for brick-making. The stagnant tered expired, there were no seamen left to nav-water, left here by the rains, slowly evaporated igate her. She therefore went to sea with the during the summer, and could not fail to render captain, the mate, one of the settlers, and two the city very unhealthy. Hence the great fresailors, three-fourths of the original number quency of intermittent and remittent fevers evhaving perished. ery autumn. Besides this, it must be rememIn February, 1793, the Hankey entered the bered that there were numerous unpaved spots carenage at St. George, in the island of Gran-in which the water settled, forming little marshada. Shortly afterward a malignant fever broke out at that port. Two-thirds of the inhabitants were attacked, and one out of every five died. The vessels in port suffered severely. Out of five hundred regular sailors, two hundred died. The severity of the fever caused Chisholm to call it Nova Pestis, for which he has been sharply criticised. It should be remembered, however, that the physicians of the South, who have long been accustomed to seeing yellow fever, were struck with the uncommon malignity of the recent epidemic, and that many of them entertain an opinion concerning it very much like that which Chisholm promulgated concerning the pestilence of 1793. Few medical men approached the bedside of a patient laboring under the Norfolk fever without being painfully sensible es in different parts of the town. At that time no water-works had been erected, and the inhabitants were compelled to use wells, which being shallow, were tainted with all the impurities which can filter through the soil of a city. Devèze says, that the drainings of the graveyards found their way into some of these wells, and that the water from them became putrid within twelve hours after it was drawn. The summer of 1793 was unusually hot and oppressive. The air was calm, or stirred by but feeble breezes, and the drought was protracted. | During the month of July, the average range of the thermometer, at three o'clock in the afternoon, was 88° Fahrenheit; and in August, one degree lower. The dew-point is not recorded, since the meteorologists of that day were not in the habit of noticing it. It must have been | Committee of Public Health. The poor espehigh, however, for there was a universal com- cially attracted their attention. They were laplaint of an unusual oppressiveness in the heat. boring at once under the evils of disease and Laborers were often compelled to cease work poverty. A hospital was opened on Bush Hill, when the mercury stood no higher than 84°. It an elevated, dry, and airy portion of Philadelwas noticed that the sweat on the surface of the phia, and some feeble efforts were made to put body dried but slowly. On the 25th of August the city in a better sanitary condition. there was a heavy rain, the last which fell till the 15th of October. When fairly established, the disease spared no age, sex, nor complexion. Men, indeed, were more subject to it than women, and the extremes of life enjoyed a comparative exemption, those between the ages of fifteen and forty being most liable to its attack. Fear was observed to predispose strongly to the disease. Any irregularity of living, violent and unaccustomed exercise, undue exposure, and in general any deviation from accustomed modes of life, had a similar effect. The physiognomy of the disease was peculiar. The eyes were usually inflamed, and had a sad and watery look, and sometimes an unnatural brilliancy and ferocity. The face was lividly flushed or dusky, and its expression gloomy and downcast. Toward the close of the disease, and sometimes not till after death, it assumed the yellow hue which has given rise to the common name of the fever. A dark matter, like coffee-grounds, was rejected from the stomach, and this symptom also has increased the nomenclature of the malady, by the significant title, Black Vomit. The mental condition was various. Occasionally there was delirium, but ordinarily the faculties remained apparently unimpaired. Dr. Rush has observed a tendency to self-deception, the patients being unwilling to acknowledge that they were af Early in August Dr. Rush noticed a peculiar aggravation of the ordinary bilious fever, which was then prevalent. On the 6th of the month a young man was taken violently ill with a fever, which, after a hemorrhage, proved fatal on the 12th. Shortly after, two other young men sickened. On inquiry, it was ascertained that the three had spent the greater portion of their time in a counting-room near one of the wharves where a quantity of damaged coffee had been thrown out. This lay upon the wharf and in the dock, putrefying and emitting a most horribly offensive smell, which sickened many persons who came near it. About the same time a number of persons living on Water Street, between Arch and Race Streets, in the immediate vicinity of the pestilential dock, died of fever, some of them being carried off in twelve hours. Dr. Rush maintains that all the early cases of the disease can be traced to this source. Convinced that the city was on the eve of a great calamity, this eminent physician gave the alarm. At first it was met in the usual spirit of trade. The fact was denied, and the informant was ridiculed. It soon became evident that the information was only too true, and on the 24th the Governor of the State directed the port physician to inquire into the matter. The re-flicted with the prevailing epidemic. He has sult of his investigation was to establish beyond doubt the fact, that a malignant fever existed along the Delaware front, especially between Arch and Race streets, and in Kensington, and that it was spreading toward the heart of the city. Sixty-seven persons were sick in that part of Water Street, and the deaths throughout the city were estimated at forty. The bills of mortality, however, show that already a hundred and fifty had perished. On the 26th of the month, the College of Physicians issued an address to the public, in which they acknowledged the presence of yellow fever, and suggested certain precautions to be adopted. A sudden change came over the feelings of the people. They passed from apathy and derision to the wildest alarm. The merchants and the United States authorities hurried away from the city. Business was at a stand-still. The infected portion of Water Street became a desert. The streets and roads leading into the country were thronged by the terrified fugitives. Even physicians, dead to the lofty instincts of their profession, fled ignominiously from the helpless city. Such was the alarm that the very hospitals were closed. At this crisis, the Mayor called a meeting of the inhabitants at the State House. Some of the most influential citizens met and organized a permanent also told us that there was usually great depression of spirits and irritability of temper. This differs from the mental condition ordinarily observed in epidemics of this disease. It is characterized by a hardihood and self-possession painful to the beholders. The victims are fully conscious of their condition, laugh at their dingy complexions, and find subjects of amusement in the most frightful accompaniments of their malady. The "walking cases" were observed in this, as in all other great epidemics in yellow fever. In some of these the patient appeared to enjoy his habitual health, till suddenly he was seized with an indefinable terror and a universal trembling; he fell senseless, and died in a few hours. More commonly, however, the persons so affected experienced a vague uneasiness, to which they attached but little importance. They maintained that they were not sick, that they had only a slight indisposition, arising from cold or imprudence in diet, that it would soon pass off of itself. The physician, on examining them, detected signs of the most profound disturbance of the vital organs, but could not convince either them or their friends of their danger. They continued to walk about and attend to their business or pleasure for the few hours of life which remained to them. |