Volume 20 — YELLOW FEVER AT MEMPHIS AND SHREVEPORT: AID FOR THE SUFFERERS.
Reading edition
Remarks before the Board of Trade at Boston, October 24, 1873.
At a meeting in aid of the sufferers by yellow fever in Memphis (Tennessee) and Shreveport (Louisiana), held at the rooms of the Board of Trade in Boston, at which the Mayor, Hon. Henry L. Pierce, presided, after remarks by Mr. Pierce and Hon. Alexander H. Rice, Mr. Sumner said:—
MR. MAYOR,—I have come less for speech than to show by my presence here the sincere interest I feel in the present meeting. For what can I say to prompt the generosity of Boston merchants? They understand this call, and their hearts have already answered it.
It is hard to hear of suffering anywhere without longing to relieve it. But happily now all impediment of distance is removed; and such are the facilities of communication that before the set of sun your contributions will brighten the faces of those distant sufferers. Do not think of distance. It is nothing. If Boston should be startled by hearing to-day that pestilence had appeared in one of our new-found possessions, as in Charlestown,—or even in Brookline, which will not be annexed,—we should feel the ties of neighborhood. But Memphis and Shreveport are neighbors by telegraph and steam, and the grander ties of a common country, which the ancient Roman orator called the “great charity comprehending all.”[228] Besides, there is that other more touching neighborhood which springs from suffering,—for I do not forget the divine hymn which teaches that
“Our neighbor is the suffering man, Though at the farthest pole.”[229]
In these latter days, my friends, distress has come less from pestilence than from conflagration. The Fire Fiend has been more active than the other demon, and property has suffered more than life. Such are the favoring conditions of climate and the general security of health in our country, that we are rarely disturbed by contagion. But it has come at last with the “reaper whose name is Death.”
To arrest this contagion, to help those exposed to its ravages, we perform a simple duty, as when we direct water upon the bursting blaze. Pestilence is a conflagration, and human life is the sacrifice. In this illustration I bring home to Boston merchants the urgency of the present call. Too well you know the terrible scene, when your magnificent and well-filled warehouses, borrowed in style and form from Venetian palaces, were seized and devoured by the flames. But other flames, not less vindictive, are now seizing and devouring fellow-men, our fellow-countrymen, in fair and beautiful places where all smiles but the benefactor Health. Let us do what we can to help the benefactor resume his sway.
At the close of Mr. Sumner’s remarks, measures were taken for the immediate receiving of subscriptions.