Green Mountain Freeman

The Horrors of Memphis. - A private letter written by a Memphis gentleman to a New York friend gives a more thrilling and sickening picture of the pestilential horrors in that city than comes to the knowledge of Northern people through the public dispatches. In fact, he says the Memphis papers have failed to record the fearful extent of suffering because they feared that business might consequently be driven away. Nevertheless, it has been driven away, and that is the most trifling of evil consequences. Whole families have been carried off by the yellow fever, and their corpses lie unburied in houses with no one to attend to them. The poor people especially suffer terribly, and when taken generally live but a short time, though rich and poor are now afflicted alike. The undertakers are not able to bury them, and the dead bodies are carried off in wagons, sometimes as many as nine in one cart. Even the prisoners at the station-houses are sent out under a guard of policemen to lay out the dead and put them in their coffins, a worse punishment perhaps than their sentence provided. The Sisters of Charity and members of the various benevolent societies who first afforded relief are now beginning to be afflicted to a considerable extent, and the contributions from outside are not commensurate with the people's extremity where sixty-five or seventy deaths are daily reported and doubtless more take place. If there was ever an appeal in this country in behalf of humanity, this is one, and a prompt response is the duty of every city and town.