The men of the Commission, coming, as they did, from different parts of the United States, were widely contrasted, no less in associations than in their varied accents and family traditions.

General Wright was, and is, one of the ablest lawyers in Tennessee, and enjoyed, at the time of his appointment on the Commission, the finest practice in Memphis. He is a Democrat; and old enough to have been a lieutenant in the Civil War on the Confederate side. But perhaps his finest laurels for bravery and devotion to duty were won at the time when he exerted himself to save Memphis in the days when she was in the grip of a terrible epidemic of yellow fever. I don’t know the exact year, but the epidemic was so out of control that all who could, left the city, while General Wright remained to organise such resistance as could be made to the spread of the dread disease.