"Ten miles or not," said Nat, "I have been well paid to-night. There is a great deal to be learned in witnessing one such performance. I can read Shakspeare now with more interest and profit than ever. I want to hear 'The Tempest' played now, and 'King Lear,' and 'Hamlet,' and 'Romeo and Juliet,' and I mean to the first chance I have."
"Ah, Nat," said Charlie, "I see that it is a foregone conclusion with you,—you are half ruined now—the more you have, the more you want. We shall be obliged to look after him more closely," addressing the last sentence to Marcus and Frank.
"Yes," added Marcus, "by the time he has heard all these plays, he will be patronizing that bar, and we shall see him reported in the Police Court in the morning."
By the time the clock struck one, Nat was at home. His visit to the theatre was not kept secret. It was soon quite generally known that he had been to the theatre, and many remarks were elicited by the fact. Good people did not respect theatres more at that time than they do now, so that they regarded this step of Nat as taken in the wrong direction.
"I am afraid that all the hopes Nat has raised among his friends will be dashed now," said one. "When a youth gets to going to the theatre, there is little hope of his doing well. I hardly thought this of him."
"I thought Nat always wanted things respectable," said a gentleman. "Does he consider the theatre a respectable place?"
"What has he done with his books?" inquired another. "I supposed that he thought of little but an education,—does he find the theatre a good school in which to be educated?"
"It is a good school in which to be educated for evil," replied the individual to whom the remark was addressed.
One person, however, was heard to say,
"It will not hurt Nat at all. You may be sure that he did not go there just for the pleasure of the thing. I have no doubt that he went for the same reason that he went to hear Webster, Everett, and others speak,—to learn something. He was drawn thither, not by his love of amusement, but by his desire to learn. Nat learns more by seeing, than half the scholars do by hard study."