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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: sign of Mother Shipton, or of Merlin's head, and the like.
With what blind, absurd, and ridiculous stuff these oracles of the
devil pleased and satisfied the people I really know not, but certain it
is that innumerable attendants crowded about their doors every day.
And if but a grave fellow in a velvet jacket, a band, and a black coat,
which was the habit those quack-conjurers generally went in, was but
seen in the streets the people would follow them in crowds, and ask
them questions as they went along.
I need not mention what a horrid delusion this was, or what it
tended to; but there was no remedy for it till the plague itself put an
end to it all - and, I suppose, cleared the town of most of those
A Journal of the Plague Year |
