eally seemed that
there would be skating on The Pool, and everyone bought skates, and
then, of course, the ice broke, and so on, and so on... there is no end
to the dramatic incidents of that great sensational time.

The theme that I sing, however, is Jeremy's Progress, and although even
Hamlet's catching of a rat influenced his development, there was one
incident of this Christmas that stands out and away from all the others,
an affair that he will never all his days forget, and that even now, at
this distance of time and experience, causes his heart to beat roughly
with the remembered excitement and pleasure.

Several weeks before Christmas there appeared upon the town walls
and hoardings the pictured announcements of the approaching visit to
Polchester of Denny's Great Christmas Pantomime "Dick Whittington."
Boxing Night was to see the first performance at our Assembly Rooms,
and during every afternoon and evening of the next three weeks this
performance was to be repeated.

A pantomime had, I believe, never visited our town before; there had, of
course, for many years been the Great Christmas Pantomime at the Theatre
Royal, Drymouth, but in those days trains were not easy, and if you
wished to attend an afternoon performance at the Drymouth Theatre you
must rise very early in the morning by the candle-light and return late
in the evening, with the cab forgetting to meet you at the station as
commanded, and the long walk up Orange Street, and a headache and a bad
temper next day.

It happened naturally then that the majority of the Polchester children
had never set their inquisitive noses within the doors of a theatre, and
although the two eldest daughters of the Dean, aged ten and eleven, had
been once to London and to Drury Lane Theatre, their sense of glory and
distinction so clouded their powers of accuracy and clarity that we were
no nearer, by their help and authority, to the understanding of what a
pantomime might really be.

I can myself recall the glory of those "Dick Whittington" pictures. Just
above Martin's the pastry-cook's (where they sold lemon biscuits),
near the Cathedral, there was a big wooden hoarding, and on to this was
pasted a marvellous representation of Dick and his Cat dining with the
King of the Zanzibar Islands. The King, a Mulatto, sat with his court
in a hall with golden pillars, and the rats were to be seen flying in a
confused flood towards the golden gates, whilst Dick, in red pl