Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/40

30 journal of Pepys. "June 7th," says this writer, "was the hottest that ever I felt in my life. This day, much against my will, did I see in Drury Lane two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and 'Lord, have mercy upon us!' writ there—a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind I ever saw." Again, on the 17th of the same month, he says: "It struck me very deep this afternoon, going with a hackney coach down Holborn, from the Lord Treasurer's, I found the coachman to drive easily and easily, and the coach stood still. He told me that he was suddenly struck very sick and almost blind. I took another coach, with a sad heart for the poor man, and fearing for myself also, lest he should have been struck with the plague."

As the calamity increased, shops were closed, dwellings were left empty, and the public thoroughfares were deserted. The markets were removed beyond the city-walls, coaches were seldom seen, except when people were fleeing from the city; a solemn stillness prevailed in many districts, and grass grew in the streets. People might be heard crying out of the windows for help, but the cry returned echoless. Some went mad; some rushed into the river, and ended their tortures by suicide. On a single night in the month of September 10,000 people died.

Many incidents of this terrible visitation are preserved, the best known being from the pen of Defoe. Rev. Thomas Vincent describes some touching scenes, of which he himself was a witness. "Among other spectacles," he says, "two, methought, were very affecting; one of a woman coming alone and weeping by the door where I lived, with a little coffin under her arm, carrying it to the new church-yard. I did judge that it was the mother of the child, and that all the family besides were dead."

An old writer thus describes an impressive scene in London during the reign of the plague: