If men would but listen to me, there need never be any more plagues in London.

But the fools will not hear wisdom." "What is your remedy, madam ?" asked Dinah, who saw very clearly that the old lady had gauged her symptoms aright; and although she had alarmed her attendants by a partial collapse an hour before, was mending now, and had no symptom of the distemper upon her.
"My remedy is too simple for fools.

Fill up every well in London--which is just a poison trap--and drink only New River water, and make every house draw its supply from thence, and we shall soon cease to hear of the plague! That's my remedy; but when I tell men so, they gibe and jeer and call me fool for my pains.
Fools every one of them! If it would only please Providence to burn their city about their ears and fill up all the old wells with the rubbish, you would soon see an end of these scares of plague.

Tush! if men will drink rank poison they deserve to have the plague--that is all I have to say to them." Such an idea as this was certainly far in advance of the times, and it was small wonder that Lady Scrope found no serious listeners when she propounded her scheme.

Dinah did not profess to have an opinion on such a wide question.