Free Glimmers of Change by Ginny Dye Page B

adding up, but she made a mental note to go by the restaurant on the way home from school the next day so she could see for herself. She had gotten closer to them since moving to Philadelphia, counting on Opal to feed her before her housemates had joined her. She’d spent her whole life with housekeepers cooking for her. Even during the war she had eaten most of her meals at Carrie’s house, with May doing all the cooking. She knew pitiful little about feeding herself. She felt no real motivation for that to change, not when there were people in the world like Opal to cook for her.
    The women laughed and talked as they finished their pie, but Janie couldn’t rid herself of the worry niggling at the back of her mind. She was suddenly eager for tomorrow to arrive so she could visit Opal and Eddie.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
Chapter Four
     
     
     
     
    The weak sun did little to warm the frigid air as Janie made her way toward the restaurant. Clanging bells from streetcars, shouts from wagon drivers, and the steady clap of carriages filled the air. Record breaking low temperatures seemed to have done little to slow activity in the city.
    Janie huddled deeper into her coat. She kept her thoughts busy with what she learned that day in class as she joined the flow of people on the sidewalk. It was easy to be preoccupied with the information she had received in class that morning.
    After seventeen years, cholera had returned to the United States.
    Dr. Anderson had delivered the news that morning. The Atalanta , an English mail steamer, had sailed for New York from London on the tenth of October. She docked at Le Havre on the eleventh, and took aboard twenty-four cabin and 540 steerage passengers. When she dropped anchor in New York’s lower bay in December, her master reported sixty cases of cholera and fifteen deaths.
    The news was devastating. In spite of the fact that ships had increased in size and their passenger lists had doubled, they still did not provide quarantine. Medical and political considerations demanded the passengers be denied entrance to America. A hospital ship was hastily fitted out in the harbor. As soon as it was possible, all the passengers were transferred to it. She could only imagine the misery of the hundreds of people confined to what they surely knew was a death trap.
    Dr. Anderson reported that new cases were occurring aboard the hospital ship, but the bitter cold had so far kept the disease from spreading to the mainland. New York was safe for the moment, but she stressed it was only a respite — for the rest of the nation, as well as for New York. History had made it clear that when the first cases of cholera spread to the mainland it would not be content until it spread far into the Midwest, searching out high population areas.
    Janie’s mind spun as she thought about the results of the horrible disease. The last major outbreak in the United States had been in 1849. Fifty-two thousand people had died in England and Wales where it began. It moved onto Ireland and killed many of the Great Famine survivors already weakened by starvation and fever. Irish immigrants, fleeing the misery in their country, brought it to the United States.
    Cholera took the life of former president James K. Polk. The disease killed thousands in New York, where it was first brought by the immigrant ships, but it wasn’t content to remain there. It spread throughout the Midwest, decimating one-tenth of the populations of St. Louis, Cincinnati, and New Orleans. The horror intensified when it was transmitted along the California, Mormon, and Oregon Trails. Close to twelve thousand people died in the wagon trains as they attempted to find a better life out west.
    Before the cholera died out, it had killed more than 150 thousand Americans and also dipped south to claim 200 thousand victims in Mexico.
    Janie shuddered as a cold blast of wind swept under her coat, but she was sure the