Robberies, murders, and other crimes, have greatly increased, and the most dreadful deeds are now committed with impunity.

You have done wisely, sir, in protecting yourself against them." "I have reason to be thankful that I have done so," replied Bloundel.
And he closed his shutter to meditate on what he had just heard.
And there was abundant food for reflection.

Around him lay a great and populous city, hemmed in, as by a fire, by an exterminating plague, that spared neither age, condition, nor sex.

No man could tell what the end of all this would be--neither at what point the wrath of the offended Deity would stop--nor whether He would relent, till He had utterly destroyed a people who so contemned his word.

Scarcely daring to hope for leniency, and filled with a dreadful foreboding of what would ensue, the grocer addressed a long and fervent supplication to Heaven, imploring a mitigation of its wrath.
On joining his family, his grave manner and silence showed how powerfully he had been affected.