While the town was full of these subjects by turns--now thinking
and speaking of the great revival of trade--now of the chances of
the election, as yet some weeks distant--now of the balls at
Cranworth Court, in which Mr. Cranworth had danced with all the
belles of the shopocracy of Eccleston--there came creeping,
creeping, in hidden, slimy courses, the terrible fever--that
fever which is never utterly banished from the sad haunts of vice
and misery, but lives in such darkness, like a wild beast in the
recesses of his den. It had begun in the low Irish
lodging-houses; but there it was so common it excited little
attention. The poor creatures died almost without the attendance
of the unwarned medical men, who received their first notice of
the spreading plague from the Roman Catholic priests.
Before the medical men of Eccleston had had time to meet together
and consult, and compare the knowledge of the fever which they
had severally gained, it had, like the blaze of a fire which had
long smouldered, burst forth in many places at once--not merely
among the loose-living and vicious, but among the decently
poor--nay, even among the well-to-do and respectable. And, to add
to the horror, like all similar pestilences, its course was most
rapid at first, and was fatal in the great majority of
cases--hopeless from the beginning. There was a cry, and then a
deep silence, and then rose the long wail of the survivors.
Pages:
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564