Sandwich Islands, would relate how he had
been, so to speak, snatched out of the lion's
jaws. Tbis explained it, for Wilkins Hubbard
did not belong to our severe Scotch denomination,
but to a sort who were supposed to have
"no saving grace;" whom our elders had
settled were to be " cast out finally." Yet
notwithstanding, Wilkins Hubbard was a remarkable
man, and I had suspected Uncle Curriehiil
hankered after that particular spiritual fleshpot.
That explained the whole quite clearly.

Left alone, a horrid secret, overpowering
temptation entered into me. Here was an
opportunity for a vision that had haunted me day
and night. Here it was in my grasp. Wilkins
Hubbard, " if he was worth his salt," I said
contemptuously, "as a Sandwich Island
missionary," could not take less than two or three
hours for his discourse. If he be not good for
that, let him retire from his vain and profitless
task and give place to better men. While my
Uncle Curriehiil was drivelling in his lights,
what if I?—the opera house was not a mile
away, the curtain would rise at eight punctually
(no matter when it came down). Yes, I would
do it.

A hansom was passing. A wild cry arrested
his progress, and brought up the serious
manservant. (N.B. I never believed in his seriousness
going beyond gin.) He thought I was off
to Wilkins Hubbard and the Sandwich Islanders,
but also thought it unspiritual in me to choose
such a " carnal vessel" as a hansom. We drove
away, I almost delirious, and got to the opera
house safely. Never did I feel so guilty—so full
of crime.

Gorgeous sight! Dazzling, bewildering blaze
of beauty! Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp was not
to be named with it—no, nor the Arabian
Nights. As for the squalid, mangey performance
in our little country town, a " band" of
fifteen, called by courtesy and with reasonable
pride—for it was an enormous effort—the orchestra,
I looked back to it with disgust. Here
everything was vast, noble, superb. It took
away my breath. It dazzled my eyes. It
deprived me of my senses. But the music—what
shall I say of that? How wild! how despairing!
how it fell and how it rose—rose to those
dark gallery latitudes where I was so happily
confined.

Everybody about me too, in these dark
latitudes, and whose faces I could not see, were
so delighted too, that they might have heard—
not a pin, whose sound is sure to strike on an
attentive ear—but even a feather fall. I could
hear deep groans of enjoyment from a musical
amateur close by me, who, with his hand to his
ear, seemed determined not to miss a note. He
had none of that absurd assistance for " following
the story" in what is called " a libretto;"
and from that I saw that he was a true amateur.
It should be mentioned that the place was so
utterly dark, it would have been impossible to
see the page.

What a ravishing night! That bewitching
lady, and her sad song, succeeded by the jocund
"Sempre Libera," which made every head wag,
and every foot patter (the groaning amateur
beside me was jumping up and down off his seat
in ecstasy); and when it came to the Drinking
Song (of the organs), then the sickly-looking
lover, who even at that stage looked as if he
was meditating something shabby and sneaking,
came to the front with a gorgeous silver claret
jug in one hand and an enormous racing-cup,
as it seemed to me, in the other, and struck up
the famous " Liba-a-mo-libi-a-mo-tum tumti-
tumti-a a-mo!" the groaning amateur could not
restrain himself, but jumped up, and in extravagant
delight clapped his hands in a way that
disgusted everybody near him.

Why dwell on the mere details of this
enchanting night? When it came to the
end—the sick room, and the consumption, and
the gorgeously elaborate Italian Opera bedstead,
catafalque-shaped, with which the bedsteads in
the royal palace would but poorly compare; when
the maid and the doctor came in, and when I
marked her altered countenance, in which disease
and the heartless absence of that poor creature,
the tenor, had left their mark, I was deeply
affected. The amateur near me was fiddling
nervously with his white handkerchief. But when
the poor creature (I mean the tenor) did turn
up at last (not, I firmly believe, from any natural
good impulse of his own), and he, and the doctor,
and the maid, and the dying lady struck up
a pathetic sick-room quartette, I could hardly
stand it any longer, and the groaning amateur
near me was mopping his eyes hard and fast.
Blissful night indeed! Down came the heavy
folds of the green curtain, and I came back to
prosy life again.

Sadly and slowly I rose to go, stumbling in
the dark over the steps and benches. Sadly and
slowly I saw the groaning amateur rise to go
also. He stumbled and groped over benches,
and I felt drawn to him by a sort of sympathy.
We had been both affected; we had been both
touched by the same chords. He seemed an
old man, and I was glad to observe that one so
old was not dead to generous impulses. An
irresistible instinct prompted me on a fresh
and more helpless stumble on his part to rush
forward and offer my arm—a civility which he
hastily declined. But I was determined not to
rebuffed, and could be useful, at least, with
a cab or something of the sort, so I followed
him down the stair into the full blaze. The full
blaze revealed his back, in which I seemed to
recognise a familiar outline.

I hurried down the steps to get a good look
at his face; but as I looked, he turned his head
sharply away. I waited till he passed; we were
both well under the glare of a lamp, and then I
saw who it was. Alas! was this the way of
going to hear the divine utterances of the Rev.
Wilkins Hubbard?

Need I say what that night resulted in a
complete and entire reconciliation—not only in a
reconciliation, but in a reform. Invidiously I
may mention that the Rev. Mr. McCorkup was
routed, and there were two particular stalls in