RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
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 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 organize such resistance as could be made to the spread of the dread disease.
Mrs. Wright was a daughter of the famous Admiral Semmes of the Confederate Navy and for some time after the war she traveled with her father in Mexico and abroad, thereby acquiring at an early age a very cosmopolitan outlook. Admiral Semmes was a great linguist and Mrs. Wright inherited his gift. She had learned to speak Spanish in her girlhood, so when she arrived in Manila she had only to renew her knowledge of the language. General and Mrs. Wright had with them their daughter Katrina, who was then about fourteen years old, but their two sons, one a naval officer, did not join them in the Philippines until later.
General Wright had, on the whole, the most delightful social qualities of anybody on the Commission. He had a keen sense of humor and could recount a great number of interesting personal experiences with a manner and wit which made him, always, a delightful companion. He was a devotee of pinochle and he instructed the entire party in the game until it was played from one end of the ship to the other. He was slow to anger, very deliberate and kindly in his judgments, and offered at times a decided contrast to his wife who was a little more hasty and not infre-
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