The new temporary management, however (whatever the ordinary management might do), recognising the rights of the spectator, refrained from selling any seats from which no view whatever could be obtained and behaved very well about it—as perhaps one has to do when half-a-guinea is charged for each seat; but with the border-line seats which they did sell—those on the confines of the possible area—- a view of the stage was only partial and so much a matter of touch-and-go that any undue craning of the neck or moving of the head sideways at once interrupted the line of vision of many worthy folk at the back; while anyone leaning too far forward from a seat in the front row could instantly, for many others, obliterate the whole stage.
It happened that on a certain very hot night in July a fat lady in one of the front seats not only leaned forward but fanned herself intermittently with a large fan.
Now and then one of the unfortunate half-guinea seat-holders behind her in the debatable territory remonstrated gently and politely, remarking on the privation her fan was causing to others, and each time the lady smiled and said she was very sorry and put the fan down; but in two minutes she was fluttering it again as hard as ever, and not a vestige of the Pentateuchal caperings or whatever was going forward could be discerned in her vicinity.
She meant well, poor lady; but it was very hot, and how could she help it when her fan was made of that particular ostrich's feathers?
"Methods of sowing, reaping, watering, and thrashing have been passed down from father to son through countless generations."
Chronicle of London Missionary Society.
Of thrashing, anyhow.
"The feature of the Keswick valley is its spacious width of skyscrape."—L.& N. W. R. Guide to the English Lakes.