Preventives of disease and disinfecting agents were diligently sought after. Alcohol, in the form of wine, brandy and whisky, was supposed to be a sovereign safeguard against the pestilence. I do not say that it was laid down as a medical dogma that an habitual inebriate enjoyed immunity from contagion; but I do say, what will probably shock my temperance readers, that all persons were counseled by their physicians to keep themselves always slightly under the influence of alcohol, so long as the pestilence should last. And most people took the advice, finding, at least, something in the half-stimulating, half-stupefying effects of liquor to brave or dull the sense of danger. Wine and brandy were freely used in the planter's family; whisky was freely circulated among the negroes of the plantation. Some among them of the Methodist persuasion and the temperance society demurred at breaking their pledge; but even these, when made to understand that the whisky was to be taken as medicine, by the advice of a physician, felt their consciences set at rest upon the subject, and never was doctor's stuff swallowed with less repugnance than their grog was taken, three times a day. Valentine held to his principles; he would not break his pledge. In vain for a long time his master, and even his mistress, remonstrated with him. Circumstances altered cases; times were changed; self-preservation was the first law of nature; in view of the present danger, his pledge was not binding; "for if he kept his pledge, he might lose his life," they would argue. "That was the Lord's affair; all he had to do was to keep his pledge; and if he should die, so much the better; life had no charms for him," Valentine would reply. And in truth the wretched young man was much to be compassionated. His wife and child alone and helpless in the midst of the plague, exposed to the united horrors of pestilence, famine and solitary death from desertion; himself forbidden to seek them at their utmost need. Thrice had he escaped and sought the city, and as often had he fallen into the hands of the voluntary police; they did not maltreat him, except inasmuch as they would not suffer him to pass without a permit from his master, and this permit could not be obtained. He could think of nothing but his wife and child. Were they living, and suffering unimagined miseries? Were they among the uncounted dead, whose rude coffins lay one upon another, three or four feet deep, not in graves, but in trenches? He did not even know. But all his thoughts by day, and his fitful dreams by night, were haunted with the forms of Fannie and of Coralie. He saw little Coralie in every phase of memory, and hope, and fear. He saw her bright and beautiful, as she had been in the sweet springtime; he saw her pale and pining, as he had seen her last in her wasting sickness; and he saw her lying dead in her coffin, and woke with a loud cry of anguish. His heart, his spirit, seemed broken.