THE TEACHER’S STORY.
“But,” continued the teacher in a more cheerful tone, “if I have stopped your amusement in one way, it is but fair that I should contribute to it in another. I hear the rain still pattering without—what would you say to my telling you a story?”
“A story! a story!” repeated the scholars, forming in a little circle around their teacher; for where are the children to be found upon earth on whom that word does not act like a spell!
“It is now long, long ago,” commenced Thorn, “nearly two hundred years, since the fearful plague raged in London. Nothing which we have witnessed in these happier days can give an idea of the horrors of that time. It is said that nearly seventy thousand people perished of this awful malady—some authors make the number even ninety thousand! The nearest relatives were afraid of each other. When an unfortunate being showed symptoms that the disease had seized him—the swelling under the arms, the pain in the throat, the black spots, which were signs of the plague—his very servants fled from him in terror; and unless some one was found to help the sufferer from love even stronger than fear of death, he was left to perish alone; for the plague was fearfully infectious. When a door was marked with a cross, the sign that the fearful scourge had entered the house, it was shunned by all but the driver of the dead-cart—that gloomy conveyance which moved slowly through the silent streets to carry away the bodies of those who had sunk beneath the terrible disease!”
“Was London ever in such a horrible state?” cried Bat Nayland; “it must have been a thousand times worse than the cholera!”
THE PLAGUE IN LONDON.
“What I have told you about it I believe to be strictly true; I leave you all, however, to judge whether what I am about to relate can be so.
“In a small house, at the time when the plague was raging, dwelt a widow with five young children. She loved them with the fondest, truest love: they were all that were left her in the world. From the first appearance of the plague in London her heart had been full of painful anxiety—far less for herself than for them. Determined to take every human precaution to guard her little ones from danger, she forbade them to quit the house, which she only left herself in order to procure food, holding a handkerchief steeped in vinegar before her face, as far as possible to keep out infection. Her anxiety became yet more distressing when she saw one morning on the door of the very opposite house the fatal sign marked, and below it chalked the heart-touching words, ‘Lord have mercy upon us!’
“That day the mother was compelled to go out for bread. She left her home with a very heavy heart, first looking earnestly upon all and each of her children, to see if they yet appeared healthy and well, repeating her command that none should stir out, and inwardly breathing a prayer that the Almighty would preserve them during her absence.