ed, and few houses will be shut up in time, except those
of the poor, who cannot conceal it, and of some people who will be
discovered by the terror and consternation which the thing put them
into.

I got myself discharged of the dangerous office I was in as soon as I
could get another admitted, whom I had obtained for a little money to
accept of it; and so, instead of serving the two months, which was
directed, I was not above three weeks in it; and a great while too,
considering it was in the month of August, at which time the distemper
began to rage with great violence at our end of the town.

In the execution of this office, I could not refrain speaking my opinion
among my neighbors as to the shutting up the people in their houses, in
which we saw most evidently the severities that were used, though
grievous in themselves, had also this particular objection against them;
namely, that they did not answer the end, as I have said, but that the
distempered people went day by day about the streets. And it was our
united opinion that a method to have removed the sound from the sick, in
case of a particular house being visited, would have been much more
reasonable on many accounts, leaving nobody with the sick persons but
such as should, on such occasions, request to stay, and declare
themselves content to be shut up with them.

Our scheme for removing those that were sound from those that were sick
was only in such houses as were infected; and confining the sick was no
confinement: those that could not stir would not complain while they
were in their senses, and while they had the power of judging. Indeed,
when they came to be delirious and light-headed, then they would cry out
of[243] the cruelty of being confined; but, for the removal of those
that were well, we thought it highly reasonable and just, for their own
sakes, they should be removed from the sick, and that, for other
people's safety, they should keep retired for a while, to see that they
were sound, and might not infect others; and we thought twenty or thirty
days enough for this.

Now, certainly, if houses had been provided on purpose for those that
were sound, to perform this demiquarantine in, they would have much less
reason to think themselves injured in such a restraint than in being
confined with infected people in the houses where they lived.

It is here, however, to be observed, that after the funerals became so
many that people could not toll t