could be given for
so wicked a thing at a time when they might conclude themselves just
going to appear at the bar of Divine justice I know not. I am very well
satisfied that it cannot be reconciled to religion and principle any
more than it can be to generosity and Humanity, but I may speak of that
again.

I am speaking now of people made desperate by the apprehensions of their
being shut up, and their breaking out by stratagem or force, either
before or after they were shut up, whose misery was not lessened when
they were out, but sadly increased. On the other hand, many that thus
got away had retreats to go to and other houses, where they locked
themselves up and kept hid till the plague was over; and many families,
foreseeing the approach of the distemper, laid up stores of provisions
sufficient for their whole families, and shut themselves up, and that so
entirely that they were neither seen or heard of till the infection was
quite ceased, and then came abroad sound and well. I might recollect
several such as these, and give you the particulars of their management;
for doubtless it was the most effectual secure step that could be taken
for such whose circumstances would not admit them to remove, or who had
not retreats abroad proper for the case; for in being thus shut up they
were as if they had been a hundred miles off. Nor do I remember that any
one of those families miscarried. Among these, several Dutch merchants
were particularly remarkable, who kept their houses like little
garrisons besieged suffering none to go in or out or come near them,
particularly one in a court in Throgmorton Street whose house looked
into Draper's Garden.

But I come back to the case of families infected and shut up by the
magistrates. The misery of those families is not to be expressed; and it
was generally in such houses that we heard the most dismal shrieks and
outcries of the poor people, terrified and even frighted to death by the
sight of the condition of their dearest relations, and by the terror of
being imprisoned as they were.

I remember, and while I am writing this story I think I hear the very
sound of it, a certain lady had an only daughter, a young maiden
about nineteen years old, and who was possessed of a very considerable
fortune. They were only lodgers in the house where they were. The young
woman, her mother, and the maid had been abroad on some occasion, I do
not remember what, for the house was not shut up;