Page:Memorials of a Southern Planter.djvu/289

 Rh a lesson never to be forgotten. Circumstances might change, the man did not; loss of wealth, political weight, youth, even wife and children, left him unshaken. In that healthy mind and strong soul wounds healed, leaving scars, it is true, but no sores.

"We were there during the dreadful plague of '78, and I was struck almost with awe by my uncle's wonderful foresight as to the fever coming to so apparently an unlikely spot, his wise advice and generous offers of aid to others, which, if acted on, would have saved many valuable lives and prevented his own family from being exposed to infection. His sagacity was almost superhuman; but what shall I call the feeling which prompted him to send his beloved daughters from their place of safety to nurse the very people who had rejected his aid while it was yet time, and even to bring the plague-stricken sufferers into his own home?

"I feel how poorly I have expressed in these lines the love and admiration I felt for my dear uncle. I pray that his qualities may flow in every drop of his blood forever; so shall he live and not die, even on this earth!

"

The yellow fever broke out in all its virulence at Dry Grove in a week from the date of Thomas's invitation to his neighbors to take refuge at Burleigh. Of the first twenty-nine cases, twenty-eight died. There were not enough well people to nurse the sick. Thomas refused to allow his daughters to go to see their sick neighbors merely to call, but when they signified their willingness to nurse them, he took them to Dry Grove himself. He threw the doors of Burleigh open, and it was made headquarters for the Howard Society. There he entertained the Spanish physician sent by the Howards from New Orleans, as well as the trained yellow-fever nurses whom he brought with him. All the rooms in the house, not excepting the dining-room and kitchen, were turned into sleeping-chambers. Even the gin-house had its occupant, and three children were