the pit. Do you
remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the _Battle of
Hexham_, and the _Surrender of Calais_, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in
the _Children in the Wood_--when we squeezed out our shilling apiece to
sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery--where
you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me--and more
strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me--and the
pleasure was the better for a little shame--and when the curtain drew
up, what cared we for our place in the house, or what mattered it where
we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with
Viola at the Court of Illyria? You used to say that the gallery was the
best place of all for enjoying a play socially; that the relish of such
exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going; that the
company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were
obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on on the
stage, because a word lost would have been a chasm which it was
impossible for them to fill up. With such reflections we consoled our
pride then, and I appeal to you whether, as a woman, I met generally
with less attention and accommodation than I have done since in more
expensive situations in the house? The getting in, indeed, and the
crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough,--but there
was still a law of civility to woman recognised to quite as great an
extent as we ever found in the other passages--and how a little
difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat, and the play, afterward!
Now we can only pay our money, and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in
the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough
then--but sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty.

"There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they became quite
common--in the first dish of peas, while they were yet dear--to have
them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can we have now? If we were
to treat ourselves now--that is, to have dainties a little above our
means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that
we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes
what I call a treat--when two people living together, as we have done,
now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like;
while each apologises, and is willing to take both halves of the blame
to his single share. I