Nor was this all.  The people had an alarmed and unsettled aspect; and whether you met them as individuals or crowds, they seemed, when closely observed, to labor under some strong and insatiable want that rendered them almost reckless.  The number of those who were reduced to mendicancy was incredible, and if it had not been for the extraordinary and unparalleled exertions of the clergy of all creeds, medical, men, and local committees, thousands upon thousands would have perished of disease or hunger on the highways.  Many, indeed, did so perish; and it was no unusual sight to meet the father and mother, accompanied by their children, going they knew not whither, and to witness one or other of them lying down on the road side; and well were they off who could succeed in obtaining a sheaf of straw, on which, as a luxury, to lay down their aching head, that was never more to rise from it, until borne, in a parish shell, to a shallow and hasty grave.

Temporary sheds were also erected on the road sides, or near them, containing fever-stricken patients, who had no other-home; and when they were released, at last, from their sorrows, nothing was more common than to place the coffin on the road side also, with a plate on the lid of it, in order to solicit, from those who passed, such aid as they could afford to the sick or starving survivors.

That, indeed, was the trying and melancholy period in which all the lingering traces of self-respect—­all recollection of former independence—­all sense of modesty was cast to the winds.  Under the terrible pressure of the complex destitution which prevailed, everything like shame was forgotten, and it was well known that whole families, who had hitherto been respectable and independent, were precipitated, almost at once, into all the common cant of importunity and clamor during this frightful struggle between life and death.  Of the truth of this, the scenes which took place at the public Soup Shops, and other appointed places of relief, afforded melancholy proof.  Here were wild crowds, ragged, sickly, and wasted away to skin and bone, struggling for the dole of charity, like so many hungry vultures about the remnant of some carcase which they were tearing, amid noise, and screams, and strife, into very shreds; for, as we have said, all sense of becoming restraint and shame was now abandoned, and the timid girl, or modest mother of a family, or decent farmer, goaded by the same wild and tyrannical cravings, urged their claims with as much turbulent solicitation and outcry, as if they had been trained, since their very infancy, to all the forms of impudent cant and imposture.