possessions stood the house and garden of a
clergyman's widow (no mistake about her widowhood!
the deepest black, and such a cap, all
through the piece!), who obstinately refused to
part with an inch of her ground. Baronet
smiles blandly, and informs us that he will
"have recourse to stratyjum." Widow has two
daughters, one very deep-voiced and glum, the
other with her hair parted on one side (which,
theatrically, always means good nature), and
funny. Funny daughter is beloved by Baronet's
son—unpleasant youth in cords, top-boots, and
a white hat, made up after Tom King the
highwayman, vide Turpin's Ride to York; or, The
Death of Black Bess (Marks, Seven Dials),
passim. Baronet proposes that son should get
clergyman's daughter to steal lease of premises,
promising to set son up in life, and allow him to
marry object of affections. Son agrees, works
upon daughter's vanity; daughter, who is vague
in Debrett, is overcome by notion of being called
the Right Honourable Mrs.——, a title which,
as the wife of a baronet's son, she is clearly
entitled to—steals the lease, hands it to son, who
hands it to Baronet, who, having got it, nobly
repudiates not merely the whole transaction, but
son into the bargain: tells him he is not son, but
merely strange child left in his care, and comes
down and winks at audience, who howl at him
with rage.

That was the most wonderful thing throughout
the evening, the contest between the
audience and the Baronet. Whenever the Baronet
made a successful move (and Vice had it all its
own way for nearly a couple of hours), the
audience howled and raved against him, called
"Yah!" whistled, shrieked, and hooted, and the
Baronet advanced to the footlights and grinned
across them, as though he should say, "I'm still
all right in spite of you!" When a villain who,
for a sum of money advanced by the Baronet, had
murdered an old man, and was afterwards seized
with remorse, stole the lease from the Baronet's
pocket, the multitude in the theatre cheered
vociferously; but the Baronet, after proving that the
purloined parchment was only a copy, and not
the original document, which he still retained,
calmly walked down to the front of the stage,
and literally winked at the people, tapping his
breast, where the lease was, in derision, and
goading the audience to the extremity of frenzy.

There were several pleasant episodes in which
the Baronet was the mainspring: hiding fifty-
pound notes in the glum sister's bundle, accusing
her of robbery, and having her locked up in his
house, whence she was rescued by the murdering
villain who had previously (out of remorse) set
the house on fire; but at length the widow, who
a minute before had been remarkably lively, and
had "given it" to the Baronet with great
vehemence and cap-shaking, suddenly declared her
intention of dying, and though a young gentleman
with a sugarloaf hat and a coat with a little cape
to it, like the pictures of Robespierre, announced
himself as a lawyer, who would defend her and
hers against anything and everybody, she forthwith
carried out her intention, sat down on a
chair, and died, out of hand. There was a faint
pretext of sending for the doctor, but there was
an evident fear on the part of most lest that
practitioner should really restore the patient,
and thus burk the great effect of the piece, so the
idea was overruled, and the Baronet, advancing to
the footlights, rubbed his hands in derision at the
audience, and the audience, cognisant of the fact
that the decease of the widow was necessary to
the subsequent appearance of her ghost, merely
answered with a subdued "Yah!" At this point
my former conductor opened the box-door and
beckoned me out. "Come in front," he said;
"it's ghost time!" The words thrilled to my
very soul, I followed him in silence, and took
my place in the boxes, close by a lady whose
time was principally occupied in giving natural
sustenance to her infant, and an older female,
apparently the child's grandmother, who was a
victim to a disease which I believe is popularly
known as the "rickets," and which impelled
her at three-minute intervals to shudder throughout
her frame, to rock herself to and fro, to stuff
the carved and hooked black bone handle of an
umbrella, that looked like a tied-up lettuce, into
her mouth, and to grind out from between her
teeth, clenched round the umbrella-handle, "Oh,
deary deary me!" On my other side were a youth
and maiden, so devoted to each other that they
never perceived my entrance into the box, and I
had not merely to shout, but to shove, before I
could effect a passage, when there was such a
disentanglement of waists from arms, and
interlaced hot hands, and lifting of heads from shoulders, that I felt uncomfortable and apologetic,
whereas the real offenders speedily fell back
into their old position, and evidently regarded
me as a Byronic creature, to whom life was a
blank.

The ghost did not appear at once. Though
the widow had slipped into a very stiff position
in her chair, and everybody around her had said
either "Ha!" or "The fatal moment!" or "Alas!"
or "All is over!" as their several tastes led
them, it was thought necessary to make the fact
of her death yet more clear, so upon the front
parlour, where the sad occurrence took place,
fell a vast body of clouds of the densest kind,
out of which, to slow music, there came two or
three ethereal persons with wings, which wagged
in a suspicious manner, bearing the widow's
body "aloft," as Mr. Dibdin has it with
reference to Tom Bowling, and thereby copying in
the most direct and unequivocal manner (but not
more directly and unequivocally than I have seen
it in theatres of grand repute, where critics
babbled of the manager's transcendent stage-
direction) Herr Lessing's picture of Leonore.
To meet these, emerged, in midair from either
side of the stage, other ethereal persons, also
with wings, whose intended serenity of expression
was greatly marred by the obstinacy of the
machinery, which propelled them in severe jerks,