Pisando la tierra dura de continuo el hombre esta y cada passo que da es sobre su sepultura.[1]

Yet notwithstanding these disadvantages winter was breathing time; and we exerted ourselves to make the best of it.  Plague might not revive with the summer; but if it did, it should find us prepared.  It is a part of man’s nature to adapt itself through habit even to pain and sorrow.  Pestilence had become a part of our future, our existence; it was to be guarded against, like the flooding of rivers, the encroachments of ocean, or the inclemency of the sky.  After long suffering and bitter experience, some panacea might be discovered; as it was, all that received infection died—­ all however were not infected; and it became our part to fix deep the foundations, and raise high the barrier between contagion and the sane; to introduce such order as would conduce to the well-being of the survivors, and as would preserve hope and some portion of happiness to those who were spectators of the still renewed tragedy.  Adrian had introduced systematic modes of proceeding in the metropolis, which, while they were unable to stop the progress of death, yet prevented other evils, vice and folly, from rendering the awful fate of the hour still more tremendous.  I wished to imitate his example, but men are used to

 —­move all together, if they move at all,[2]

and I could find no means of leading the inhabitants of scattered towns and villages, who forgot my words as soon as they heard them not, and veered with every baffling wind, that might arise from an apparent change of circumstance.

I adopted another plan.  Those writers who have imagined a reign of peace and happiness on earth, have generally described a rural country, where each small township was directed by the elders and wise men.  This was the key of my design.  Each village, however small, usually contains a leader, one among themselves whom they venerate, whose advice they seek in difficulty, and whose good opinion they chiefly value.  I was immediately drawn to make this observation by occurrences that presented themselves to my personal experience.

In the village of Little Marlow an old woman ruled the community.  She had lived for some years in an alms-house, and on fine Sundays her threshold was constantly beset by a crowd, seeking her advice and listening to her admonitions.  She had been a soldier’s wife, and had seen the world; infirmity, induced by fevers caught in unwholesome quarters, had come on her before its time, and she seldom moved from her little cot.  The plague entered the village; and, while fright and grief deprived the inhabitants of the little wisdom they possessed, old Martha stepped forward and said—­ “Before now I have been in a town where there was the plague.”—­“And you escaped?”—­“No, but I recovered.”—­After this Martha was seated more firmly than ever on the regal seat, elevated by reverence and love.  She