Just in Bell Alley, at the right hand of the passage, there was a more terrible cry than that, and I could hear women and children run screaming about the rooms distracted. A garret window opened, and somebody from a window on the other side of the alley called and asked, "What is the matter?" upon which, from the first window it was answered: "O Lord, my old master has hanged himself!" The other asked again: "Is he quite dead?" And the first answered, "Ay, ay, quite dead--quite dead and cold." It is scarce credible what dreadful things happened every day, people in the rage of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was indeed intolerable, oftentimes laying violent hands on themselves, throwing themselves out at their windows, etc.; mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy; some dying of mere fright, without any infection; others frightened into despair, idiocy, or madness. There were a great many robberies and wicked practices committed even in this dreadful time. The power of avarice was so strong in some that they would run any hazard to steal and to plunder; and in houses where all the inhabitants had died and been carried out, they would break in without regard to the danger of infection, and take even the bedclothes. _III.--Universal Desolation_ For about a month together, I believe there did not die less than 1,500 or 1,700 a day, one day with another; and in the beginning of September good people began to think that God was resolved to make a full end of the people in this miserable city. Whole families, and, indeed, whole streets of families were swept away together, and the infection was so increased that at length they shut up no houses at all. People gave themselves up to their fears, and thought that nothing was to be hoped for but an universal desolation. It was even in the height of this despair that it pleased God to stay His hand, and to slacken the fury of the contagion. When the people despaired of life and abandoned themselves, it had a very strange effect for three or four weeks; it made them bold and venturous; they were no more shy of one another, nor restrained within doors, but went anywhere and everywhere, and ran desperately into any company. It brought them to crowd into the churches; looking on themselves as all so many dead corpses, they behaved as if their lives were of no consequence, compared to the work which they came about there. The conduct of the lord mayor and magistrates was all the time admirable, so that bread was always to be had in plenty, and cheap as usual; provisions were never wanting in the markets; the streets were kept free from all manner of frightful objects--dead bodies, or anything unpleasant; and for a time fires were kept burning in the streets to cleanse the air of infection.