heard in the orchestra. It is time to study
the bill.

From that document it is to be gathered
that the first piece is one bearing the title of
Op het Land, which in the English tongue
signifies, Of the Land. Grand melodrama
of thrilling interest, apparently,— for I could
follow it but lamely indeed. First it flashed
upon me that this must be Mr. Mark Lemon's
ingenious Adelphi drama, Sea and Land,
done into Dutch by sharp Dutch playwright.
No, it proves to be out of the
French.

He would be a wise stranger who should
unriddle the mystery of the plot.
Melodrama, yet no violence; thrilling
interest, yet no pistol-shots! Fat heroine in
white, declaiming harsh language, lavishing
op and mar, and something concerning Kon
door-booren, and other strange jargon, which
she gave out hoarsely, like a captain on his
quarter-deck. Most unprepossessing young
person for any unlicensed man of spirit— any
proper-minded outlaw, corsair, or
pirate-captain— to run the usual risks of his
profession; small encouragement for the youth
of low degree, and corpulent person, who, it
was plain, aspired to the hand of the young
woman. More than that, was not to be made
out; beyond a faint, glimmering notion that
young and unprepossessing lady might have
been wronged in early life by the villain of
the piece. Still, I am so much in the dark as
to the whole march of the incidents, that I
may be doing serious injustice to this last
named gentleman, who, all the while, may
have been a very worthy person, fulfilling
his social duties in an exemplary
manner, it is certain, however, that to him
was addressed most of the injured lady's
declamatory adjuration, calling down (as it
seemed to me) the vengeance of heaven on
the unworthy trespasser. Here, too, it just
occurs to me that the unprepossessing woman
may not have been injured in early life
at all, and that the villain of the piece may
have been only urging his suit— or, indeed,
may have been no other than the père
noble harshly constraining his daughter's
affections.

All which constructions were fairly open to
the stranger, to spell out, which way he would.
He might as well have gotten into the
Niebuhr legends. There was a comic doctor, too,
who was the source of infinite chuckling, and
who had a way of rubbing his own back, in
a dexterous and jointless manner that was
highly diverting.

There was one plethoric old gentleman at
the end of a bench whom this movement
affected so painfully as to cause him to fall
backward from his seat, on the verge of
suffocation from successive spasms of internal
stomach-laughter. He was raised to his feet
quite purple, but was off again when the
comic physician repeated his droll manoeuvre.
Here again, too, I may be all astray, attaching
this gentleman to a profession with which
he may have had no concern in the world.
To him, too, was addressed the greater part
of the observations of the injured lady:
with which, to do him full justice, he seemed
to sympathise most heartily.

All honour to him, doctor or no doctor!

What became of that injured woman I
was never able to discover. She disappeared
suddenly, and without violence, towards the
middle of the last act. Whether she died
quietly in her bed, at her father's residence, or
was basely decoyed into a dark place by the
villain, and there stabbed; or was poisoned;
or died of pure inanition like the hapless
widower, known as Baron Lovell: whether
she passed through one or all of these
thresholds to immortality, are so many moot
points open to speculation.

By the time the curtain had come down,
the house had filled in pretty well, and the
cloud had thickened to a deep fog. The
men below are working with a remorseless
intensity, thickening the fog every instant.
In aid of whom floats in subsidiary cloud
from the Dissenting gallery. Waiters all
accoutred, thread their way busily among the
smokers, carrying live matches, quite after the
manner of the gentlemen who attend race-
courses, saying as they go, something that
may very likely mean,— Cigars t'light! cigars
t'light! Practically it would seem to amount
to the invitation of: "Gents, please to give
your orders: the waiter's in the room!" for
there is eternal tide of trays and
spider-stemmed glasses and tun-shaped black
bottles setting in steadily— ceaselessly, too—
towards inspired audience. The tide flows in
through a side-door whence cometh the music
of clinking glasses — where, too, hand-maidens
are in full work, filling, refilling, and
compounding.

It should have been mentioned, that even
when the injured lady's cup of sorrows was
being filled over, the unfeeling work of
replenishing those cups of comfort went
forward diligently and without
compunction.

During the interval, the orchestra plays.
Suffice it to say, its music was NOT that of
the spheres, whatever that may be. It was
in the brass department that the departure
from the laws of harmony was the widest
and saddest. It might have been half-a-dozen
mail-coach-guards gotten together, and
blowing for the bare life. It was of the fair
order— of the row-de-dow species — of
tin-tinniest! The big drum served them in good
stead that night.

Second piece: Het Scheeps Jungker. Le
Mousse, that is; or, in plain English, the
Midshipman. I note that divers nautical
gentlemen in the front rows, who have been
following the woes of the injured lady with
unconcealed impatience, now hitch up their
garments, and settle themselves comfortably.
This piece will be in their line, grateful as