“Yes, but what about us?” replied the same voice from the Gallery. “You don’t know her. You’ve only just come on; we’ve been listening to her all the evening. She’s quiet now, you let her be.”
“Oh, let me out, if only for one moment!” shrieked the poor woman. “I have something that I must say to my child.”
“Write it on a bit of paper, and pass it out,” suggested a voice from the Pit. “We’ll see that he gets it.”
“Shall I keep a mother from her dying child?” mused the turnkey. “No, it would be inhuman.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” persisted the voice of the Pit; “not in this instance. It’s too much talk that has made the poor child ill.”
The turnkey would not be guided by us. He opened the cell door amidst the execrations of the whole house. She talked to her child for about five minutes, at the end of which time it died.
“Ah, he is dead!” shrieked the distressed parent.
“Lucky beggar!” was the unsympathetic rejoinder of the house.
Sometimes the criticism of the audience would take the form of remarks, addressed by one gentleman to another. We had been listening one night to a play in which action seemed to be unnecessarily subordinated to dialogue, and somewhat poor dialogue at that. Suddenly, across the wearying talk from the stage, came the stentorian whisper—
“Jim!”