t's Sunday evening!' says I.
'All right, sir,' says Mustapha. 'They stop acting on the stage, I grant
you, on Sunday evening--but they don't stop acting in the pulpit. Come
and see the last new Sunday performer of our time.' As he wouldn't have
any more wine, there was nothing else for it but to go.

"We went to a street at the West End, and found it blocked up with
carriages. If it hadn't been Sunday night, I should have thought we were
going to the opera. 'What did I tell you?' says Mustapha, taking me up
to an open door with a gas star outside and a bill of the performance.
I had just time to notice that I was going to one of a series of 'Sunday
Evening Discourses on the Pomps and Vanities of the World, by A Sinner
Who Has Served Them,' when Mustapha jogged my elbow, and whispered,
'Half a crown is the fashionable tip.' I found myself between two demure
and silent gentlemen, with plates in their hands, uncommonly well filled
already with the fashionable tip. Mustapha patronized one plate, and I
the other. We passed through two doors into a long room, crammed with
people. And there, on a platform at the further end, holding forth to
the audience, was--not a man, as I had expected--but a Woman, and that
woman, MOTHER OLDERSHAW! You never listened to anything more eloquent
in your life. As long as I heard her she was never once at a loss for a
word anywhere. I shall think less of oratory as a human accomplishment,
for the rest of my days, after that Sunday evening. As for the matter
of the sermon, I may describe it as a narrative of Mrs. Oldershaw's
experience among dilapidated women, profusely illustrated in the pious
and penitential style. You will ask what sort of audience it was.
Principally Women, Augustus--and, as I hope to be saved, all the old
harridans of the world of fashion whom Mother Oldershaw had enameled in
her time, sitting boldly in the front places, with their cheeks ruddled
with paint, in a state of devout enjoyment wonderful to see! I left
Mustapha to hear the end of it. And I thought to myself, as I went out,
of what Shakespeare says somewhere, 'Lord, what fools we mortals be!'

"Have I anything more to tell you before I leave off? Only one thing
that I can remember.

"That wretched old Bashwood has confirmed the fears I told you I had
about him when he was brought back here from London. There is no kind of
doubt that he has really lost all the little reason he ever had. He is
perfectly harmless,