I Contrived To Be So Much
In The Way Of This Brisk Funeral, That I Was Not Only Touched By
The Men Bearing The Body, But Also, I Believe, By The Foot Of The
Dead Man, As It Hung Lolling Out Of The Bier.
This accident gave
me such a strong interest in denying the soundness of the contagion
theory, that I did
In fact deny and repudiate it altogether; and
from that time, acting upon my own convenient view of the matter, I
went wherever I chose, without taking any serious pains to avoid a
touch. It seems to me now very likely that the Europeans are
right, and that the plague may be really conveyed by contagion; but
during the whole time of my remaining in the East, my views on this
subject more nearly approached to those of the fatalists; and so,
when afterwards the plague of Egypt came dealing his blows around
me, I was able to live amongst the dying without that alarm and
anxiety which would inevitably have pressed upon my mind if I had
allowed myself to believe that every passing touch was really a
probable death-stroke.
And perhaps as you make your difficult way through a steep and
narrow alley, shut in between blank walls, and little frequented by
passers, you meet one of those coffin-shaped bundles of white linen
that implies an Ottoman lady. Painfully struggling against the
obstacles to progression interposed by the many folds of her clumsy
drapery, by her big mud-boots, and especially by her two pairs of
slippers, she works her way on full awkwardly enough, but yet there
is something of womanly consciousness in the very labour and effort
with which she tugs and lifts the burthen of her charms.
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