A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe (adult books to read txt) 📕

purse, and then he shook the money out into the pail of water, so he carried it in. The money, as I remember, was about thirteen shilling and some smooth groats and brass farthings.

There might perhaps have been several poor people, as I have observed above, that would have been hardy enough to have ventured for the sake of the money; but you may easily see by what I have observed that the few people who were spared were very careful of themselves at that time when the distress was so exceeding great.

Much about the same time I walked out into the fields towards Bow; for I had a great mind to see how things were managed in the river and among the ships; and as I had some concern in shipping, I had a notion that it had been one of the best ways of securing one’s self from the infection to have retired into a ship; and musing how to satisfy my curiosity in that point, I turned away over the fields from Bow to Bromley, and down to Blackwall to the stairs which are there for landing or taking water.

Here I saw a poor man walking on the bank, or seawall, as they call it, by himself. I walked a while also about, seeing the houses all shut up. At last I fell into some talk, at a distance, with this poor man; first I asked him how people did thereabouts. “Alas, sir!” says he, “almost desolate; all dead or sick. Here are very few families in this part, or in that village” (pointing at Poplar), “where half of them are not dead already, and the rest sick.” Then he pointing to one house, “There they are all dead,” said he, “and the house stands open; nobody dares go into it. A poor thief,” says he, “ventured in to steal something, but he paid dear for his theft, for he was carried to the churchyard too last night.” Then he pointed to several other houses. “There,” says he, “they are all dead, the man and his wife, and five children. There,” says he, “they are shut up; you see a watchman at the door”; and so of other houses. “Why,” says I, “what do you here all alone?” “Why,” says he, “I am a poor, desolate man; it has pleased God I am not yet visited, though my family is, and one of my children dead.” “How do you mean, then,” said I, “that you are not visited?” “Why,” says he, “that’s my house” (pointing to a very little, low-boarded house), “and there my poor wife and two children live,” said he, “if they may be said to live, for my wife and one of the children are visited, but I do not come at them.” And with that word I saw the tears run very plentifully down his face; and so they did down mine too, I assure you.

“But,” said I, “why do you not come at them? How can you abandon your own flesh and blood?” “Oh, sir,” says he, “the Lord forbid! I do not abandon them; I work for them as much as I am able; and, blessed be the Lord, I keep them from want”; and with that I observed he lifted up his eyes to heaven, with a countenance that presently told me I had happened on a man that was no hypocrite, but a serious, religious, good man, and his ejaculation was an expression of thankfulness that, in such a condition as he was in, he should be able to say his family did not want. “Well,” says I, “honest man, that is a great mercy as things go now with the poor. But how do you live, then, and how are you kept from the dreadful calamity that is now upon us all?” “Why, sir,” says he, “I am a waterman, and there’s my boat,” says he, “and the boat serves me for a house. I work in it in the day, and I sleep in it in the night; and what I get I lay down upon that stone,” says he, showing me a broad stone on the other side of the street, a good way from his house; “and then,” says he, “I halloo, and call to them till I make them hear; and they come and fetch it.”

“Well, friend,” says I, “but how can you get any money as a waterman? Does anybody go by water these times?” “Yes, sir,” says he, “in the way I am employed there does. Do you see there,” says he, “five ships lie at anchor” (pointing down the river a good way below the town), “and do you see,” says he, “eight or ten ships lie at the chain there, and at anchor yonder?” (pointing above the town). “All those ships have families on board, of their merchants and owners, and suchlike, who have locked themselves up and live on board, close shut in, for fear of the infection; and I tend on them to fetch things for them, carry letters, and do what is absolutely necessary, that they may not be obliged to come on shore; and every night I fasten my boat on board one of the ship’s boats, and there I sleep by myself, and, blessed be God, I am preserved hitherto.”

“Well,” said I, “friend, but will they let you come on board after you have been on shore here, when this is such a terrible place, and so infected as it is?”

“Why, as to that,” said he, “I very seldom go up the ship-side, but deliver what I bring to their boat, or lie by the side, and they hoist it on board. If I did, I think they are in no danger from me, for I never go into any house on shore, or touch anybody, no, not of my own family; but I fetch provisions for them.”

“Nay,” says I, “but that may be worse,