So few at first escaped after they were attacked by the malignant and mysterious disease, that you looked upon them as persons who had trodden the confines of another world--as beings rescued from the jaws of death, and destined to accomplish some great mission. You gazed on them in awe and wonder. Those in the prime of life, and ruddy with apparent health, fell around you like summer flowers beneath the scythe of the mower. Then medical men of long standing began to drop off: you missed one here, and another there, and with them hope at last fled. "They cannot save themselves," exclaimed the terror-stricken populace; "then how can we hope to escape if the disease overtake us?" Old nurses who had grown grey in the service of Death shrank back and shuddered as they heard themselves summoned to attend the sick. Thousands who had the means fled into the country and hastened to the sea-side, where they thought themselves secure; but the wings of the Angel of Death threw a melancholy shadow over the whole land. Stout-hearted men who had families started suddenly from their sleep in the dead of night, if they only heard one of their children moaning in its slumber: words muttered in a dream were like a sharp icicle thrust into the heart, for they feared that the Destroyer had come; and they knew that he seldom retired without carrying off his victim. In old tavern-parlours, where the same company had assembled for years, the sounds of merriment were no longer heard. Men spoke to one another "with bated breath;" inquired who was dead, and who dying; and if some old acquaintance was but a few minutes behind his usual time, they sat gazing on his vacant chair in silence, or perchance one ventured to inquire in a whisper if he had been seen that night. Many shook hands at the tavern-doors, went home, and never met again. Four in the morning was a dreaded hour, and numbers no doubt died through fright who were attacked in the faint dawning of the day, for they believed that time to be fatal. In some streets five or six shops that stood together were closed--many were not opened again for several days. You saw the windows standing open day and night, but not a living soul stirred within those walls. Many who died were removed in the night: sometimes twenty were buried in one grave.