s, and holding their
sides, down fell the place they call the gallery; all the folk in't being
hurl'd topsy-turvy, head foremost among the saw-dust on the floor below;
their guffawing soon being turned to howling, each one crying louder than
another at the top note of their voices, "Murder! murder! hold off me;
murder! my ribs are in; murder! I'm killed--I'm speechless!" and other
lamentations to that effect; so that a rush to the door took place, in
the which every thing was overturned--the doorkeeper being wheeled away
like wildfire--the furms stramped to pieces--the lights knocked out--and
the two blind fiddlers dung head foremost over the stage, the bass fiddle
cracking like thunder at every bruise. Such tearing, and swearing, and
tumbling, and squealing, was never witnessed in the memory of man since
the building of Babel: legs being likely to be broken, sides staved in,
eyes knocked out, and lives lost--there being only one door, and that a
small one; so that, when we had been carried off our feet that length, my
wind was fairly gone, and a sick dwalm came over me, lights of all manner
of colours, red, blue, green, and orange, dancing before me, that
entirely deprived me of common sense; till, on opening my eyes in the
dark, I found myself leaning with my broadside against the wall on the
opposite side of the close. It was some time before I minded what had
happened; so, dreading skaith, I found first the one arm, and then the
other, to see if they were broken--syne my head--and finally both of my
legs; but all, as well as I could discover, was skin-whole and
scart-free. On perceiving this, my joy was without bounds, having a
great notion that I had been killed on the spot. So I reached round my
hand, very thankfully, to take out my pocket-napkin, to give my brow a
wipe, when lo, and behold! the tail of my Sunday's coat was fairly off
and away, docked by the hainch buttons.

So much for plays and playactors--the first and last, I trust in grace,
that I shall ever see. But indeed I could expect no better, after the
warning that Maister Wiggie had more than once given us from the pulpit
on the subject. Instead, therefore, of getting my grand reward for
finding the old man's daughter, the whole covey of them, no better than a
set of swindlers, took leg-bail, and made that very night a moonlight
flitting, and Johnny Hammer, honest man, that had wrought from sunrise to
sunset for two days, fitting up their place