The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: they were abroad. These were the dangerous people; these were the
people of whom the well people ought to have been afraid; but then,
on the other side, it was impossible to know them.
And this is the reason why it is impossible in a visitation to prevent
the spreading of the plague by the utmost human vigilance: viz., that it
is impossible to know the infected people from the sound, or that the
infected people should perfectly know themselves. I knew a man who
conversed freely in London all the season of the plague in 1665, and
kept about him an antidote or cordial on purpose to take when he
thought himself in any danger, and he had such a rule to know or have
warning of the danger by as indeed I never met with before or since.
 A Journal of the Plague Year |