In 1833 scarlet fever prevailed extensively in Plymouth, and was very fatal. In a population of 5,000 the number of deaths during the year was one hundred and sixty-seven, of which sixty-seven were of children under ten years of age. Taking the population of Plymouth in 1904 of 11,118, and the number of deaths in that year, one hundred and fifty-seven, as a basis, the normal number of deaths in the population of five thousand in 1833, would have been less than seventy. I remember that a daughter of Dr. Charles Cotton, either Sophia or another whose name I do not recall, died of the prevailing disease, and that I was one of the pall bearers at her funeral. It was the invariable custom in those days, never varied from, to have pall bearers for old and young, and in cases of funerals of children, Clement Bates, the sexton, would call at the High school and ask for a detail of six boys for service at one or more of the funerals on that day. As well as I can remember, no precautions were taken to prevent the spread of the contagion, and funerals were attended as usual, and no quarantine was established. I have no doubt that during the visitation of the sickness I served as pall bearer at least a dozen times. Some years later I narrowly escaped serious inconvenience arising from municipal precautions against contagious diseases. In February, 1857, I had a schooner in the West India trade, and when after her departure from Boston in the early part of that month I thought her well on her way towards her destination, I received a telegram from Thomas Everett Cornish, her master, that she had been caught by the ice in the bay soon after leaving Boston, and driven by the prevailing northwest gales into Truro Bay, where she was in the ice jam a week, during which she had received damages which she was now repairing in Provincetown. I at once drove to Sandwich, and taking the cars for Yarmouth, then the terminus of the Cape Cod Railroad, drove to Truro, reaching there about midnight. The next morning I hired a conveyance to Provincetown, reaching there for dinner. After dinner I boarded the schooner, where carpenters were at work getting out new stanchions for the damaged bulwarks. While talking in the cabin with Capt. Cornish, who was bald, and had taken off his hat, I noticed some pustules on his scalp which I saw at once were the pustules of varioloid. Fearing that he might become sick and would require a substitute for the voyage, I called on Dr. Stone, who fortunately was an old friend, and took him to see the Captain, whom he at once declared suffering from a mild attack of varioloid, which, however, would not prevent his prosecution of the voyage. He said that he was the port physician, and that it would be his duty to report the case to the board of health. Fortunately I had said nothing at the hotel concerning my business, or my connection with the schooner, and I exacted a promise from Dr. Stone to say nothing about me.