ANGEL AGNES:Or, the Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport.The Strangely Romantic History and Sad DeathofMiss Agnes Arnold,the Adopted Daughter of the Late Samuel Arnold, of This City.Wealthy, Lovely, and Engaged to Be Married, YetThis Devoted Girl Volunteered to Go andNurse Yellow Fever Patients atShreveport, Louisiana.After Three Weeks of Incessant Labor She Met with aPainful and Fatal Accident._She Died in the Hope of a Blessed Immortality_.Her Intended Husband, Who Had Followed Her
...toShreveport, Had Already Died, and the TwoWere Buried Side by Side.Terrible Scenes during the Plague.byWESLEY BRADSHAW.Issued byOld Franklin Publishing House in Philadelphia, Pa.Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, byC. W. Alexander, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress atWashington, D.C.ANGEL AGNES.May God protect you, reader of this book, from all manner of sickness;but above all, from that thrice dreaded pestilence, yellow fever. Ofall the scourge ever sent upon poor sinful man, none equals in horrorand loathsomeness yellow fever. Strong fathers and husbands, sons andbrothers, who would face the grape-shot battery in battle, have fleddismayed from the approach of yellow fever. They have even desertedthose most dear to them. Courageous, enduring women, too, who fearedhardly any other form of sickness, have been terrified into cowardiceand flight when yellow fever announced its awful presence.Such was the state of affairs when, a short time ago, the startlingannouncement was made that yellow fever had broken out in Shreveport,Louisiana, and that it was of the most malignant type. At onceeverybody who could do so left the stricken city for safer localities,and, with equal promptitude, other cities and towns quarantinedthemselves against Shreveport, for fear of the spread of the frightfulcontagion to their own homes and firesides.Daily the telegraph flashed to all parts of the land the condition ofShreveport, until the operators themselves were cut down by thedisease and carried to the graveyard. Volunteers were then called forfrom among operators in the places, and several of these, who came inresponse to the call, though acclimated, and fanciedly safe, took itand died. Then it was that terror really began to take hold of thepeople in earnest. A man was alive and well in the morning, and atnight he was a horrible corpse. The fond mother who thanked heaven, asshe put her children to bed, that she had no signs of the malady, andwould be able to nurse them if they got sick, left those little onesorphans before another bedtime came around. In some cases even, thefell destroyer within forty-eight hours struck down whole families,leaving neither husband, mother nor orphans to mourn each other, butsweeping them all into eternity on one wave as it were.Then it was that a great wail of mortal distress rose fromShreveport--a call for help from one end of the land to another.Business came to a stand-still, the ordinary avocations of life weresuspended. No work! no money! no bread! Nothing but sickness! nothingbut horror! nothing but despair! nothing but death! Alas! was there nohelp in this supreme moment? There was plenty of money forthcoming,but no nurses. Philanthropic men and women in near and also distantStates, sent their dollars even by telegraph. But who would go thitherand peril his or her life for the good of the city in sackcloth andashes?
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