he ball were the foremost on whom the
plague-stroke fell. But the disease, pursuing its onward progress,
soon ceased to be exclusively a prerogative of aristocracy. Its red
brand was no longer conferred like a noble's star or an order of
knighthood. It threaded its way through the narrow and crooked
streets, and entered the low, mean, darksome dwellings and laid its
hand of death upon the artisans and laboring classes of the town. It
compelled rich and poor to feel themselves brethren then, and stalking
to and fro across the Three Hills with a fierceness which made it
almost a new pestilence, there was that mighty conqueror--that scourge
and horror of our forefathers--the small-pox.

We cannot estimate the affright which this plague inspired of yore by
contemplating it as the fangless monster of the present day. We must
remember, rather, with what awe we watched the gigantic footsteps of
the Asiatic cholera striding from shore to shore of the Atlantic and
marching like Destiny upon cities far remote which flight had already
half depopulated. There is no other fear so horrible and unhumanizing
as that which makes man dread to breathe heaven's vital air lest it be
poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend lest the grip of
the pestilence should clutch him. Such was the dismay that now
followed in the track of the disease or ran before it throughout the
town. Graves were hastily dug and the pestilential relics as hastily
covered, because the dead were enemies of the living and strove to
draw them headlong, as it were, into their own dismal pit. The public
councils were suspended, as if mortal wisdom might relinquish its
devices now that an unearthly usurper had found his way into the
ruler's mansion. Had an enemy's fleet been hovering on the coast or
his armies trampling on our soil, the people would probably have
committed their defence to that same direful conqueror who had wrought
their own calamity and would permit no interference with his sway.
This conqueror had a symbol of his triumphs: it was a blood-red flag
that fluttered in the tainted air over the door of every dwelling into
which the small-pox had entered.

Such a banner was long since waving over the portal of the
province-house, for thence, as was proved by tracking its footsteps
back, had all this dreadful mischief issued. It had been traced back
to a lady's luxurious chamber, to the proudest of the proud, to her
that was so delicate and hardly o