Page:A Journal of the Plague Year (1722).djvu/212

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204
Memoirs of

ventur'd to ſtay in Town, and had not gone away with my Brother, and his Family, but it was too late for that now; and after I had retreated and ſtay’d within Doors a good while, before my Impatience led me Abroad, than they call’d me, as I have ſaid, to an ugly and dangerous Office, which brought me out again; but as that was expir’d, while the hight of the Diſtemper laſted, I retir’d again, and continued cloſe ten or twelve Days more. During which many diſmal Spectacles repreſented themſelves in my View, out of my own Windows, and in our own Street, as that perticularly from Harrow-Alley, of the poor outrageous Creature which danced and ſung in his Agony, and many others there were: Scarſe a Day or Night paſs’d over, but ſome diſmal Thing or other happened at the End of that Harrow-Alley, which was a Place full of poor People, moſt of them belonging to the Butchers, or to Employments depending upon the Butchery.

Sometimes Heaps and Throngs of People would burſt out of that Alley, moſt of them Women, making a dreadful Clamour, mixt or Compounded of Skreetches, Cryings and Calling one another, that we could not conceive what to make of it; almoſt all the dead Part of the Night the dead Cart ſtood at the End of that Alley, for if it went in it could not well turn again, and could go in but a little Way. There, I ſay, it ſtood to receive dead Bodys, and as the Church-Yard was but a little Way off, if it went away full it would ſoon be back again : It is impoſſible to deſcribe the moſt horrible Cries and Noiſe the poor People would make at their bringing the dead Bodies of their Children and Friends out to the Cart, and by the Number one would have thought, there had been none left behind, or that theſe were People enough for a ſmall City liveing in thoſe Places: Several times they cryed Murther, ſometimes Fire; but