Russian Tuva throat singer on David Letterman

A Journal of the Plague Year

I just finished reading Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. This book is a description of London during the Great Plague of 1665. It sounds like people back then were as ungrateful and oblivious as they are now:

“But the Mercy of God was greater to the rest than we had reason to expect; for the Malignity, as I have said, of the Distemper was spent, the Contagion was exhausted…and the Health of the City began to return…

“I wish I cou’d say, that as the City had a new Face, so the Manners of the People had a new Appearance: I doubt not but there were many that retain’d a sincere Sense of their Deliverance, and that were heartily thankful to that sovereign Hand, that had protected them in so dangerous a Time; it would be very uncharitable to judge otherwise in a City so populous, and where the People were so devout, as they were here in the Time of the Visitation [of the plague] itself; but except what of this was to be found in particular Families, and Faces, it must be acknowledg’d that the general Practice of the People was just the same as it was before, and very little Difference was to be seen.”