He was greeted with loud and prolonged applause.
The orchestra struck up, and the comic gentleman commenced his song.
As he finished his verse he looked up to the gallery to help him out of the chorus, saying, “Now, then, gentlemen, the Hexeter Hall touch, if you please.”
The song was called “Keep your weather eye open, my boys,” and it was vociferously “angcord” by the noisy multitude, who were flattered at being permitted to lend their services in the chorus.
The gentleman with the large umbrella had his work to do. He was called on again and again, and had to sing fresh verses containing more pointed allusions to persons and events of the time.
When the audience consented to part with their favourite, the curtain rose for the representation of a transpontine melodrama of the most pronounced and formidable description.
It was a little incongruous, but had, nevertheless, all the elements to commend it to the appreciative audience, for whom it had been written by a veteran playwright who dealt in such hotly spiced commodities.
It would be expecting too much of us or any other man to describe the plot after the fashion of the newspaper critics, for to say the truth the incidents in the drama were too chaotic and heartrending to admit of their being placed before the reader in black and white.
The leading personages may, however, be briefly described.
In the first place, there was a wicked baronet, who persecuted the heroine of the piece. She was, as a matter of course, an innocent and artless seraphic creature, entitled the “Lily of Ludgate.”