substances about them, and
the impediments to their progress yielded at their touch. Could we take
integral parts of this power, and not be subject to its operation? Could we
domesticate a cub of this wild beast, and not fear its growth and
maturity?

Thus we began to feel, with regard to many-visaged death let loose on the
chosen districts of our fair habitation, and above all, with regard to the
plague. We feared the coming summer. Nations, bordering on the already
infected countries, began to enter upon serious plans for the better
keeping out of the enemy. We, a commercial people, were obliged to bring
such schemes under consideration; and the question of contagion became
matter of earnest disquisition.

That the plague was not what is commonly called contagious, like the
scarlet fever, or extinct small-pox, was proved. It was called an epidemic.
But the grand question was still unsettled of how this epidemic was
generated and increased. If infection depended upon the air, the air was
subject to infection. As for instance, a typhus fever has been brought by
ships to one sea-port town; yet the very people who brought it there, were
incapable of communicating it in a town more fortunately situated. But how
are we to judge of airs, and pronounce--in such a city plague will die
unproductive; in such another, nature has provided for it a plentiful
harvest? In the same way, individuals may escape ninety-nine times, and
receive the death-blow at the hundredth; because bodies are sometimes in a
state to reject the infection of malady, and at others, thirsty to imbibe
it. These reflections made our legislators pause, before they could decide
on the laws to be put in force. The evil was so wide-spreading, so violent
and immedicable, that no care, no prevention could be judged superfluous,
which even added a chance to our escape.

These were questions of prudence; there was no immediate necessity for an
earnest caution. England was still secure. France, Germany, Italy and
Spain, were interposed, walls yet without a breach, between us and the
plague. Our vessels truly were the sport of winds and waves, even as
Gulliver was the toy of the Brobdignagians; but we on our stable abode
could not be hurt in life or limb by these eruptions of nature. We could
not fear--we did not. Yet a feeling of awe, a breathless sentiment of
wonder, a painful sense of the degradation of humanity, was introduced into
every heart. Nature, our mother