that
by degrees his head sunk into his body so between his shoulders, that
the crown of his head was very little seen above the bone of his
shoulders; and by degrees, losing both voice and sense, his face,
looking forward, lay against his collar bone, and could not be kept up
any otherwise, unless held up by the hands of other people. And the poor
man never came to himself again, but languished near a year in that
condition, and died. Nor was he ever once seen to lift up his eyes, or
to look upon any particular object.[184]

I cannot undertake to give any other than a summary of such passages as
these, because it was not possible to come at the particulars where
sometimes the whole families where such things happened were carried off
by the distemper; but there were innumerable cases of this kind which
presented[185] to the eye and the ear, even in passing along the
streets, as I have hinted above. Nor is it easy to give any story of
this or that family, which there was not divers parallel stories to be
met with of the same kind.

But as I am now talking of the time when the plague raged at the
easternmost parts of the town; how for a long time the people of those
parts had flattered themselves that they should escape, and how they
were surprised when it came upon them as it did (for indeed it came upon
them like an armed man when it did come),--I say this brings me back to
the three poor men who wandered from Wapping, not knowing whither to go
or what to do, and whom I mentioned before,--one a biscuit baker, one a
sailmaker, and the other a joiner, all of Wapping or thereabouts.

The sleepiness and security of that part, as I have observed, was such,
that they not only did not shift for themselves as others did, but they
boasted of being safe, and of safety being with them. And many people
fled out of the city, and out of the infected suburbs, to Wapping,
Ratcliff, Limehouse, Poplar, and such places, as to places of security.
And it is not at all unlikely that their doing this helped to bring the
plague that way faster than it might otherwise have come: for though I
am much for people's flying away, and emptying such a town as this upon
the first appearance of a like visitation, and that all people who have
any possible retreat should make use of it in time, and begone, yet I
must say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left, and must
stand it, should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from