第91章 Part 6(18)

But to leave these things just as I found them,it was certain that those people who were more than ordinarily cautious of their health,did take particular directions for what they called seasoning of their houses,and abundance of costly things were consumed on that account which I cannot but say not only seasoned those houses,as they desired,but filled the air with very grateful and wholesome smells which others had the share of the benefit of as well as those who were at the expenses of them.

And yet after all,though the poor came to town very precipitantly,as I have said,yet I must say the rich made no such haste.The men of business,indeed,came up,but many of them did not bring their families to town till the spring came on,and that they saw reason to depend upon it that the plague would not return.

The Court,indeed,came up soon after Christmas,but the nobility and gentry,except such as depended upon and had employment under the administration,did not come so soon.

I should have taken notice here that,notwithstanding the violence of the plague in London and in other places,yet it was very observable that it was never on board the fleet;and yet for some time there was a strange press in the river,and even in the streets,for seamen to man the fleet.But it was in the beginning of the year,when the plague was scarce begun,and not at all come down to that part of the city where they usually press for seamen;and though a war with the Dutch was not at all grateful to the people at that time,and the seamen went with a kind of reluctancy into the service,and many complained of being dragged into it by force,yet it proved in the event a happy violence to several of them,who had probably perished in the general calamity,and who,after the summer service was over,though they had cause to lament the desolation of their families -who,when they came back,were many of them in their graves -yet they had room to be thankful that they were carried out of the reach of it,though so much against their wills.We indeed had a hot war with the Dutch that year,and one very great engagement at sea in which the Dutch were worsted,but we lost a great many men and some ships.But,as I observed,the plague was not in the fleet,and when they came to lay up the ships in the river the violent part of it began to abate.

I would be glad if I could close the account of this melancholy year with some particular examples historically;I mean of the thankfulness to God,our preserver,for our being delivered from this dreadful calamity.Certainly the circumstance of the deliverance,as well as the terrible enemy we were delivered from,called upon the whole nation for it.The circumstances of the deliverance were indeed very remarkable,as I have in part mentioned already,and particularly the dreadful condition which we were all in when we were to the surprise of the whole town made joyful with the hope of a stop of the infection.

Nothing but the immediate finger of God,nothing but omnipotent power,could have done it.The contagion despised all medicine;death raged in every corner;and had it gone on as it did then,a few weeks more would have cleared the town of all,and everything that had a soul.Men everywhere began to despair;every heart failed them for fear;people were made desperate through the anguish of their souls,and the terrors of death sat in the very faces and countenances of the people.

In that very moment when we might very well say,'Vain was the help of man',-I say,in that very moment it pleased God,with a most agreeable surprise,to cause the fury of it to abate,even of itself;and the malignity declining,as I have said,though infinite numbers were sick,yet fewer died,and the very first weeks'bill decreased 1843;a vast number indeed!

It is impossible to express the change that appeared in the very countenances of the people that Thursday morning when the weekly bill came out.It might have been perceived in their countenances that a secret surprise and smile of joy sat on everybody's face.They shook one another by the hands in the streets,who would hardly go on the same side of the way with one another before.Where the streets were not too broad they would open their windows and call from one house to another,and ask how they did,and if they had heard the good news that the plague was abated.Some would return,when they said good news,and ask,'What good news?'and when they answered that the plague was abated and the bills decreased almost two thousand,they would cry out,'God be praised I'and would weep aloud for joy,telling them they had heard nothing of it;and such was the joy of the people that it was,as it were,life to them from the grave.I could almost set down as many extravagant things done in the excess of their joy as of their grief;but that would be to lessen the value of it.