t the custom of giving them "vails," which
had theretofore universally prevailed in Scotland, was abolished.
"Nothing," writes Mr. Arnot, "can tend more to make servants
rapacious, insolent, and ungrateful, than allowing them to display
their address in extracting money from the visitors of their lord."
After the riot in the footmen's gallery, the gentlemen of the county
of Aberdeen resolved neither to give, nor to allow their servants to
receive, any money from their visitors under the name of drink-money,
card-money, &c., and instead, augmented their wages. This example was
"followed by the gentlemen of the county of Edinburgh, by the Faculty
of Advocates, and other respectable public bodies; and the practice
was utterly exploded over all Scotland."

It was not only while they occupied the gallery, however, that the
footmen contrived to give offence to the audience. Their conduct while
they kept places for their employers in the better portions of the
house, appears to have been equally objectionable. In the _Weekly
Register_ for March 25th, 1732, it is remarked: "The theatre should be
esteemed the centre of politeness and good manners, yet numbers of
them [the footmen] every evening are lolling over the boxes, while
they keep places for their masters, with their hats on; play over
their airs, take snuff, laugh aloud, adjust their cocks'-combs, or
hold dialogues with their brethren from one side of the house to the
other." The fault was not wholly with the footmen, however: their
masters and mistresses were in duty bound to come earlier to the
theatre and take possession of the places retained for them. But it
was the fashion to be late: to enter the theatre noisily, when the
play was half over, and even then to pay little attention to the
players. In Fielding's farce of "Miss Lucy in Town," produced in 1742,
when the country-bred wife inquires of Mrs. Tawdry concerning the
behaviour of the London fine ladies at the playhouses, she is
answered: "Why, if they can they take a stage-box, where they let the
footman sit the two first acts to show his livery; then they come in
to show themselves--spread their fans upon the spikes, make curtsies
to their acquaintance, and then talk and laugh as loud as they are
able."

CHAPTER X.

FOOT-LIGHTS.

As the performances of the Elizabethan theatres commenced at three
o'clock in the afternoon, and the public theatres of the period were
open to the sky (except over the