I repeat, it was a glorious
night!

Before the curtain rose we had time to glance about us on that scene,
to both entirely new--the inside of a theatre. Shabby and small as the
place was, it was filled with all the beau monde of Coltham, which
then, patronized by royalty, rivalled even Bath in its fashion and
folly. Such a dazzle of diamonds and spangled turbans and
Prince-of-Wales' plumes. Such an odd mingling of costume, which was
then in a transition state, the old ladies clinging tenaciously to the
stately silken petticoats and long bodices, surmounted by the prim and
decent bouffantes, while the younger belles had begun to flaunt in the
French fashions of flimsy muslins, shortwaisted--narrow-skirted. These
we had already heard Jael furiously inveighing against: for Jael,
Quakeress as she was, could not quite smother her original propensity
towards the decoration of "the flesh," and betrayed a suppressed but
profound interest in the same.

John and I quite agreed with her, that it was painful to see gentle
English girls clad, or rather un-clad, after the fashion of our enemies
across the Channel; now, unhappy nation! sunk to zero in politics,
religion, and morals--where high-bred ladies went about dressed as
heathen goddesses, with bare arms and bare sandalled feet, gaining none
of the pure simplicity of the ancient world, and losing all the
decorous dignity of our modern times.

We two--who had all a boy's mysterious reverence for womanhood in its
most ideal, most beautiful form, and who, I believe, were, in our
ignorance, expecting to behold in every woman an Imogen, a Juliet, or a
Desdemona--felt no particular attraction towards the ungracefully
attired, flaunting, simpering belles of Coltham.

But--the play began.

I am not going to follow it: all the world has heard of the Lady
Macbeth of Mrs. Siddons. This, the first and last play I ever
witnessed, stands out to my memory, after more than half a century, as
clear as on that night. Still I can see her in her first scene,
"reading a letter"--that wondrous woman, who, in spite of her modern
black velvet and point lace, did not act, but WAS, Lady Macbeth: still
I hear the awe-struck, questioning, weird-like tone, that sent an
involuntary shudder through the house, as if supernatural things were
abroad--"THEY MADE THEMSELVES--AIR!" And still there quivers through
the silence that piteous cry of a strong heart broken--"ALL THE
PERFUMES OF ARABIA WI