care.'--'Scene 3, back perspective with practical bridge. Bridge
ready, White? Got the tressels there?'--'All right.'

'Very well. Clear the stage,' cries the manager, hastily packing every
member of the company into the little space there is between the wings
and the wall, and one wing and another. 'Places, places. Now then,
Witches--Duncan--Malcolm--bleeding officer--where's the bleeding
officer?'--'Here!' replies the officer, who has been rose-pinking for the
character. 'Get ready, then; now, White, ring the second music-bell.'
The actors who are to be discovered, are hastily arranged, and the actors
who are not to be discovered place themselves, in their anxiety to peep
at the house, just where the audience can see them. The bell rings, and
the orchestra, in acknowledgment of the call, play three distinct chords.
The bell rings--the tragedy (!) opens--and our description closes.

CHAPTER XIV--VAUXHALL-GARDENS BY DAY

There was a time when if a man ventured to wonder how Vauxhall-gardens
would look by day, he was hailed with a shout of derision at the
absurdity of the idea. Vauxhall by daylight! A porter-pot without
porter, the House of Commons without the Speaker, a gas-lamp without the
gas--pooh, nonsense, the thing was not to be thought of. It was
rumoured, too, in those times, that Vauxhall-gardens by day, were the
scene of secret and hidden experiments; that there, carvers were
exercised in the mystic art of cutting a moderate-sized ham into slices
thin enough to pave the whole of the grounds; that beneath the shade of
the tall trees, studious men were constantly engaged in chemical
experiments, with the view of discovering how much water a bowl of negus
could possibly bear; and that in some retired nooks, appropriated to the
study of ornithology, other sage and learned men were, by a process known
only to themselves, incessantly employed in reducing fowls to a mere
combination of skin and bone.

Vague rumours of this kind, together with many others of a similar
nature, cast over Vauxhall-gardens an air of deep mystery; and as there
is a great deal in the mysterious, there is no doubt that to a good many
people, at all events, the pleasure they afforded was not a little
enhanced by this very circumstance.

Of this class of people we confess to having made one. We loved to
wander among these illuminated groves, thinking of the patient and
laborious researches which had been carried on there d