Fancy old men dressed in old
nightgowns, with knock-knees, and dirty flesh-colored cotton stockings,
and dabs of brick-dust on their wrinkled old chops, and tow-wigs (such
wigs!) for the bald ones, and great tin spears in their hands mayhap,
or else shepherds' crooks, and fusty garlands of flowers made of red and
green baize. Fancy troops of girls giggling, chattering, pushing to and
fro, amidst old black canvas, Gothic halls, thrones, pasteboard Cupids,
dragons, and such like. Such dirt, darkness, crowd, confusion and gabble
of all conceivable languages was never known!
If you COULD but have seen Munseer Anatole! Instead of looking twenty,
he looked a thousand. The old man's wig was off, and a barber was giving
it a touch with the tongs; Munseer was taking snuff himself, and a boy
was standing by with a pint of beer from the public-house at the corner
of Charles Street.
I met with a little accident during the three-quarters of an hour which
they allow for the entertainment of us men of fashion on the stage,
before the curtain draws up for the bally, while the ladies in the boxes
are gaping, and the people in the pit are drumming with their feet and
canes in the rudest manner possible, as though they couldn't wait.
Just at the moment before the little bell rings and the curtain flies
up, and we scuffle off to the sides (for we always stay till the very
last moment), I was in the middle of the stage, making myself very
affable to the fair figgerantys which was spinning and twirling about
me, and asking them if they wasn't cold, and such like politeness, in
the most condescending way possible, when a bolt was suddenly withdrawn,
and down I popped, through a trap in the stage, into the place below.
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