armed and made capable of all the effects that heaven
usually directs by a contagion. Among these causes and effects, this of
the secret conveyance of infection, imperceptible and unavoidable, is
more than sufficient to execute the fierceness of Divine vengeance,
without putting it upon supernaturals and miracles.

This acute penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and the
infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact caution
could not secure us while in the place; but I must be allowed to
believe,--and I have so many examples fresh in my memory to convince me
of it that I think none can resist their evidence,--I say, I must be
allowed to believe that no one in this whole nation ever received the
sickness or infection but who received it in the ordinary way of
infection from somebody, or the clothes, or touch, or stench of somebody
that was infected before.

SPREAD OF THE PLAGUE THROUGH NECESSITIES OF THE POOR

Before people came to right notions of the infection, and of infecting
one another, people were only shy of those that were really sick; a man
with a cap upon his head, or with cloths round his neck, which was the
case of those that had swellings there,--such was indeed frightful. But
when we saw a gentleman dressed, with his band on, and his gloves in his
hand, his hat upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we had not the
least apprehensions, and people conversed a great while freely,
especially with their neighbors and such as they knew. But when the
physicians assured us that the danger was as well from the sound,--that
is, the seemingly sound,--as the sick, and that those people that
thought themselves entirely free were oftentimes the most fatal; and
that it came to be generally understood that people were sensible of it,
and of the reason of it; then, I say, they began to be jealous of
everybody, and a vast number of people locked themselves up so as not to
come abroad into any company at all, nor suffer any that had been abroad
in promiscuous company to come into their houses or near them; at least
not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath or of any
smell from them; and when they were obliged to converse at a distance
with strangers, they would always have preservatives in their mouths,
and about their clothes, to repel and keep off the infection.

It must be acknowledged that when people began to use these cautions,
they were less exposed to danger, an