Contrasted Events

Ot many months after the visit of General Scott vague rumors of the spread of Asiatic cholera came to our ears. By autumn the dread disease had swept all over Europe slaying its thousands and putting the inhabitants of the infected cities into a panic. The winter of 1848 was favorable to the spread of cholera; a mild, damp, muggy atmosphere prevailed, and the physicians in our city began to predict that we were certain to be visited by the terrible scourge within the year. In 1832 our land had been stricken with cholera and I remembered well the sad reports that reached our little hamlet at Ridgefield from week to week.

For many months, while the black cloud now seemed to be hanging over the defenseless towns of America, we hoped that we might be spared from its ravages, but I think the cholera reached New York in March or April of 1849. At first it was confined to the lower part of the city, where the authorities tried vigorously to stamp it out, meanwhile endeavoring to keep the matter as quiet as possible for fear of unduly alarming the people. One morning in June Mr. Chamberlain came running into the office; and he was so excited that we thought something dreadful had occurred. I followed him and he said, “Will you promise not to tell what has happened?” I answered in the affirmative; and then he unfolded a pitiful story of a man who had been taken in our very midst; and how they had hurried him to the nearest hospital — a common cart being the only vehicle that could be immediately secured — but the poor sufferer had died on the way. Then we knew that the disease might enter our school at any moment; in which case we feared a terrible mortality among the pupils, for none of them had left for the summer vacation.

On the following Monday we had our first case. One of the youngest girls was taken; she called me to her and asked me to hold her in my lap, as I had been accustomed to do.

‘Miss Crosby, I am going home,” she said, “and I just wanted to bid you good-bye and to tell you I love you. Now lay me down again.” Toward evening she died and before sunrise the next morning we carried her to Trinity Cemetery, where a brief prayer was said; and then, just as the dawn was coming across the eastern hills, our little company slowly wended its way back to the Institution to await the next case.

Dr. J. W. G. Clements was one of the rrost skillful physicians that the city afforded; but medicine was almost powerless to check the ravages of cholera, except it were used merely as a preventative. I assisted as a volunteer nurse, and helped the doctor make some of the remedies. One of them was composed of three parts mercury and one part opium, rolled into pills: I remember that we made six hundred in one day. At the appearance of anything like a symptom of cholera we administered very generous doses of these pills, which proved to be efficient remedies in half of our twenty cases, ten terminating fatally.

I shudder when I recall those days; for frequently the stillness of the night, while I was watching at some bedside, would be broken by the hoarse cry, “Bring out your dead,” from some of the city officials as they knocked at the door of a bereaved household. Once, as I was entering the sick room, I struck rry foot against an object, which I instantly recognized as a coffin awaiting the morning burial.

When the fourth of July came Dr. Clements and Mr. Chamberlain insisted that I was to go to Brooklyn for a short rest. But at the end of three days I was summoned back to the Institution to welcorre, with the customary poem, the great Irish tenperance advocate, Father Mathew; and the brief sojourn of the grand old man in our midst was like the visit of an angel to a house of death.

“Daughter, are you from Ireland?” he asked after I had warmly praised the deeds of his countrymen in their struggle for independence.

“No,” I was obliged to reply, “but I love Ireland.” Then the kind patriarch of temperance laid his hand reverently on my head, and his touch seemed to me like that of a saint who had been permitted to leave his abode in heaven for one single moment to cheer the desolate children of earth.

Not many days after his visit I felt that I had some of the symptoms of cholera myself; and during the day

I walked about a great deal and took a large quantity of the cholera pills; for I was well aware that yielding to the disease practically meant death. Yet I did not tell any of those around me, lest I should frighten them; but I excused myself at six o’clock saying that I had been several nights almost without any sleep; and after a good night’s rest, at eight the following morning, I awakened to find myself in perfectly normal health. When, however, it became known that I had been in danger of the disease, there was a hasty consultation, after which, Mr. Chamberlain announced that I was to leave for the country on the first of August.

So I left the sorrowing city, which had been almost depopulated by the departure of all who could possibly retire to a safer place, until the frosts of November should kill the epidemic. There were two new cases at the Institution after I left, and three deaths; but about two weeks later the twenty pupils who remained were taken to Whitlockville, New York, for the rest of the summer. In late October the mayor of New York wrote a very beautiful letter asking his scattered people to return to their homes because the danger was past; and so, early in November, our little family were again united.

But I leave these sad events and now turn back almost ten years, to 1839 and the class-meetings at the Eighteenth Street Methodist Church. Some of us used to go down there regularly, and on Thursday evening of each week a leader came from that church to conduct a class in the Institution. In those days I was timid and never spoke in public, when I could possibly avoid it; and I must confess that I had grown somewhat indifferent to the means of grace, so much so, in fact, that I attended the meetings and played for them on the condition that they should not call on me to speak.

But one evening the leader brought a young man with him and he was destined to have an important influence on my life. He was Mr. Theodore Camp, a teacher in the city schools; and a man noted for his generous public spirit. From the beginning of our acquaintance I found him a true friend; and I used to consult him concerning all matters in which I was undetermined how to act. In 1845 he was placed in charge of our industrial department; and then we used to attend the class meetings together, but he never urged me in religious matters. And yet I owe my conversion to that same friend, in so far as I owe it to any mortal. By a strange dream I was aroused from a comparative state of indifference. Not that the dream had any particular effect, in itself, except as the means of setting me to thinking. It seemed that the sky had been cloudy for a number of days; and finally someone came to me and said that Mr. Camp desired to see me at once. Then I thought I entered the room and found him very ill.

“Fanny, can you give up our friendship?” he asked.

“No, I cannot; you have been my advisor and friend and what could I do without your aid?”

“But,” replied he, “why would you chain a spirit to earth when it longs to fly away and be at rest?”

“Well,” I replied, “I cannot give you up of myself but I will seek Divine Assistance.”

“But will you meet me in Heaven?”

“Yes, I will, God helping me,” I replied; and I I thought his last words were, “Remember you promise a dying man!” Then the clouds seemed to roll from my spirit, and I awoke from the dream with a start. I could not forget those words, “Will you meet me in Heaven?” and although my friend was perfectly well I began to consider whether I could really meet him, or any other acquaintance in the Better Land, if called to do so.

The weeks sped on until the autumn of 1850 when revival meetings were being held in the Thirtieth Street Methodist Church. Some of us went down every evening; and, on two occasions, I sought peace at the atlar, but did not find the joy I craved, until one evening, November 20, 1850, it seemed to me that the light must indeed come then or never; and so I arose and went to the altar alone. After a prayer was offered, they began to sing the grand old consecration hymn,

“Alas, and did my Saviour bleed,
And did my Sovereign die?”

And when they reached the third line of the fourth stanza, “Here Lord, I give myself away,”

my very soul was flooded with a celestial light. I sprang to my feet, shouting “hallelujah,” and then for the first time I realized that I had been trying to hold the world in one hand and the Lord in the other.

But my growth in grace was very slow from the beginning. The next Thursday evening I gave a public testimony at our class meeting; when I finished the tempter said to me, “Well, Fanny, you made a good speech, didn’t you?” and I realized at once that this was the old pride returning again to reign in my heart. For a few days I was greatly depressed until a kind friend suggested that I must “go back and do the first works quickly,” which meant that I had not made a complete surrender of my will; and then I promised to do my duty whenever the dear Lord should make it plain to me.

But not many weeks later Mr. Stephen Merritt asked me to close one of our class meetings with a brief prayer. My first thought was “I can’t”; then the voice of conscience said, “but your promise”; and from that hour, I believe I have never refused to pray or speak in a public service, with the result that I have been richly blessed.