Luke Wright's Grit

An Incident In the Career of Governor Taft's Successor.

CALM IN THE FACE OF DEATH

John Louis Taylor Tells How the General Braved It for Humanity's Sake and Describes His Character as Indicated In a Memphis Yellow Fever Epidemic.

General Luke E. Wright, who is to succeed William H. Taft as governor of the Philippines, says John Louis Taylor in the El Paso News, was, prior to his appointment to the Philippine commission, a lawyer at Memphis, Tenn.  He was the partner of United States Senator Tom Turley, who was made a senator against his will and who had never before held a public office. It is presumed that it was partially due to Senator Turley's influence that President McKinley selected General Wright as a member of the Philippine commission. The choice was a wise one, as subsequent developments have proved.

That the people of Memphis have cause to revere General Wright and rejoice over any good fortune that may come to him is due to the fact that he proved himself to be a man during the yellow fever epidemics which swept that city in 1878-79 and killed tens of thousands. It was during those times which tried men's souls that he showed what stuff he was made of. He did not run away, as did physicians, ordinary citizens and nearly all ministers, except Catholic priests, but stayed at home and fought the yellow death.

He was a member of what was called the "Howard association", which was composed of men banded together and pledged to face the calamity that confronted them and risk their lives to alleviate the suffering of the masses and preserve order in a city devastated by one of the most terrible epidemics of modern times. At that day, when Memphis was devastated and silent, when the greatest noise was that made by the cards at midnight rumbling over the stones en route to the cemeteries with their high piled burdens of unknown dead, General Wright stayed at his post and braved death for humanity's sake. Dozens of his associates died, yet he remained steadfast. It was necessary that some one should remain. The populace was scattered to the four winds, and thieves, ghouls and burglars ran rampant through the town. Those who had been trapped by the quarantine lines knew that almost certain death awaited them, and all the veneering of civilization was thrown off. Men became brutes and in their desperation committed all manner of crimes.

General Wright and his colleagues succored the sick and suppressed crime by radical means. Ghouls and pillagers were dealt with in a manner similar to that in vogue after the Galveston disaster, and order was preserved at the point of the bayonet.

It was during the awful summer of 1878 that I first saw General Wright. I have never forgotten his face. The yellow death had swept out of existence entire families in the neighborhood where I lived. I was a child. Playmates and associates had died and been carted away. Next door to me the son of Jefferson Davis, president of the Southern Confederacy, had breathed his last. One day after my little brother was stricken. At the end of three days he expired. One week later the disease fastened upon me, then but a lad of eight. In the dimness of the silent room and the whirling dizziness of eyes burning with fever I remember that a man came into the house. He sat beside the bed and felt my pulse.

They told me it was General Wright of the relief committee. He was facing death, but was as cool and deliberate as the soldier who goes into battle expecting to die and unmindful of his fate. He spoke a few words to me and the attendants, laid his hand upon my scorching brow, turned aside, wrote an order for medicines and supplies from the relief station and went out.

Beyond the open doorway an August sun was blazing with unusual ferocity in a cloudless sky. There was a hush everywhere. No laborers were in the fields, and the wheels of commerce were still. Only the graveyards exhibited signs of activity. The dead and dying were on every hand. General Luke E. Wright walked among these, looking death in the eye as calmly as he occupies his position today as governor of the Philippine Islands.