haggard--faces full of evil and deceit.

"Every mother's son of them had his fists anchored in his breeches
pockets, and swaggered about, nudging each other's ribs with their sharp
little elbows. They were not many minutes together before a battle took
place. Some one had tripped 'Gums,' and one of his old shoes flew into
the air. I think he of the white coat was the rascal, but being dubbed a
philosopher, he did his best to look very wise, but a slap on the side of
the ridge of his white collar upset his dignity, and 'Horace' 'went in,'
and his bony fists rattled away on the close-shaven pate of 'Gums.'

"The doors are now unbarred, and this ragged 'pent up little Utica' rends
itself, but not without much more scratching and much swearing. O, the
cold-blooded oaths that rang from those young lips! As the passage to
the pit is by a sort of cellar door, I lost sight of the young scamps as
the last one pitched down its gloomy passage.

"In the human stream--in a whirlpool of fellow-beings--nudging their way
to the boxes and the upper tiers, I now found myself. It was a terrible
struggle; females screaming, were eddied around and around until their
very faces were in a wire cage of their own 'skeletons.'

"'Look out for pickpockets,' shouted a Metropolitan. Every body then
tried to button his coat over his breast, and every body gave it up as a
bad job. In at last, but with the heat of that exertion--the smell of
the hot gas--the fetid breath of two thousand souls, not particular,
many, as to the quality of their gin--what a sweltering bath follows!
The usher sees a ticket clutched before him, and a breathless individual
saying wildly, 'Where?' He points to a distant part of the house, and
the way to it is through a sea of humanity. A sort of a Dead Sea, for
one can walk on it easier than he can dive through it. I shall never
know how I got there at last; all I remember now are the low curses, the
angry growls and a road over corns and bunions.

"The prompter's bell tingles and then tingles again. The bearded Germans
of the orchestra hush their music, and the big field of green baize
shoots to the cob-web arch.

"Now is the time to scan the scene--that teeming house--that instant when
all faces are turned eagerly to the foot-lights, waiting breathlessly the
first sound of the actor's voice. The restlessness of that tossing sea
of humanity is at a dead calm now. Every nook and cranny is
occupied--none to