Such was the state of affairs when, a short time ago, the startling
announcement was made that yellow fever had broken out in Shreveport,
Louisiana, and that it was of the most malignant type. At once
everybody who could do so left the stricken city for safer localities,
and, with equal promptitude, other cities and towns quarantined
themselves against Shreveport, for fear of the spread of the frightful
contagion to their own homes and firesides.
Daily the telegraph flashed to all parts of the land the condition of
Shreveport, until the operators themselves were cut down by the
disease and carried to the graveyard. Volunteers were then called for
from among operators in the places, and several of these, who came in
response to the call, though acclimated, and fanciedly safe, took it
and died. Then it was that terror really began to take hold of the
people in earnest. A man was alive and well in the morning, and at
night he was a horrible corpse. The fond mother who thanked heaven, as
she put her children to bed, that she had no signs of the malady, and
would be able to nurse them if they got sick, left those little ones
orphans before another bedtime came around. In some cases even, the
fell destroyer within forty-eight hours struck down whole families,
leaving neither husband, mother nor orphans to mourn each other, but
sweeping them all into eternity on one wave as it were.
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