as reported that the buriers were
so wicked as to strip them in the cart, and carry them quite naked to
the ground; but as I cannot credit anything so vile among Christians,
and at a time so filled with terrors as that was, I can only relate it,
and leave it undetermined.

Innumerable stories also went about of the cruel behavior and practice
of nurses who attended the sick, and of their hastening on the fate of
those they attended in their sickness. But I shall say more of this in
its place.

I was indeed shocked with this sight, it almost overwhelmed me; and I
went away with my heart most afflicted, and full of afflicting thoughts
such as I cannot describe. Just at my going out of the church, and
turning up the street towards my own house, I saw another cart, with
links, and a bellman going before, coming out of Harrow Alley, in the
Butcher Row, on the other side of the way; and being, as I perceived,
very full of dead bodies, it went directly over the street, also,
towards the church. I stood a while, but I had no stomach[119] to go
back again to see the same dismal scene over again: so I went directly
home, where I could not but consider with thankfulness the risk I had
run, believing I had gotten no injury, as indeed I had not.

Here the poor unhappy gentleman's grief came into my head again, and
indeed I could not but shed tears in the reflection upon it, perhaps
more than he did himself; but his case lay so heavy upon my mind, that I
could not prevail with myself but that I must go out again into the
street, and go to the Pye Tavern, resolving to inquire what became of
him.

It was by this time one o'clock in the morning, and yet the poor
gentleman was there. The truth was, the people of the house, knowing
him, had entertained him, and kept him there all the night,
notwithstanding the danger of being infected by him, though it appeared
the man was perfectly sound himself.

It is with regret that I take notice of this tavern. The people were
civil, mannerly, and an obliging sort of folks enough, and had till this
time kept their house open, and their trade going on, though not so very
publicly as formerly. But there was a dreadful set of fellows that used
their house, and who, in the middle of all this horror, met there every
night, behaving with all the reveling and roaring extravagances as is
usual for such people to do at other times, and indeed to such an
offensive degree that the very master and mistres