Chronicles of Notre Dame du Lac
Edward Sorin, CSC -- Translated by John M. Toohey, CSC, 1895

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1854

pg 201       disappeared--almost one out of every five.  Two only had not been 
             attacked, and the survivors looked more like skeletons or walking 
             corpses than living men.  Employments even the most indispensable 
             had daily to be abandoned, and yet it was of the utmost importance 
             to keep this state of affairs from being known, and to have things 
             move in the ordinary way.
70 pupils         Seventy pupils had entered, and an exact knowledge of the 
             sanitary condition of the community would have sufficed to empty 
             the college in twenty-four hours.  Happily good health reigned 
             amongst them; only three or four were attacked, and only one died.
             But if panic fear did not seize upon them, it was unquestionably 
             due to the intervention of a special Providence.  At times there 
             was only a single professed member on foot, whilst four were 
             incapacitated.  Half of the deaths were unknown to them,  the 
             sacraments were administered, and burials took place at night.  
             Oh! what mournful days were those of the months of August and 
             September 1854!  Oh! may God grant that such days never return to 
             N.D. du Lac!  A second trial of such a nature would be more than 
             enough to ruin in completely.