han
ordinary offensive, she snuffed vinegar up her nose and sprinkled
vinegar upon her head-clothes, and held a handkerchief wetted with
vinegar to her mouth.

It must be confessed that though the plague was chiefly among the poor,
yet were the poor the most venturous and fearless of it, and went about
their employment with a sort of brutal courage; I must call it so, for
it was founded neither on religion nor prudence; scarce did they use any
caution, but ran into any business which they could get employment in,
though it was the most hazardous. Such was that of tending the sick,
watching houses shut up, carrying infected persons to the pest-house,
and, which was still worse, carrying the dead away to their graves.

It was under this John Hayward's care, and within his bounds, that the
story of the piper, with which people have made themselves so merry,
happened, and he assured me that it was true. It is said that it was
a blind piper; but, as John told me, the fellow was not blind, but
an ignorant, weak, poor man, and usually walked his rounds about ten
o'clock at night and went piping along from door to door, and the people
usually took him in at public-houses where they knew him, and would give
him drink and victuals, and sometimes farthings; and he in return would
pipe and sing and talk simply, which diverted the people; and thus he
lived. It was but a very bad time for this diversion while things were
as I have told, yet the poor fellow went about as usual, but was almost
starved; and when anybody asked how he did he would answer, the dead
cart had not taken him yet, but that they had promised to call for him
next week.

It happened one night that this poor fellow, whether somebody had given
him too much drink or no--John Hayward said he had not drink in his
house, but that they had given him a little more victuals than ordinary
at a public-house in Coleman Street--and the poor fellow, having not
usually had a bellyful for perhaps not a good while, was laid all along
upon the top of a bulk or stall, and fast asleep, at a door in the
street near London Wall, towards Cripplegate-, and that upon the same
bulk or stall the people of some house, in the alley of which the house
was a corner, hearing a bell which they always rang before the cart
came, had laid a body really dead of the plague just by him, thinking,
too, that this poor fellow had been a dead body, as the other was, and
laid there by some of the neighbo