Before eight of the clock, Mr. Stagg, peering from behind the curtain, noted with satisfaction that the house was filling rapidly; upon the stroke of the hour it was crowded to the door, without which might be heard angry voices contending that there must be yet places for the buying. The musicians began to play and more candles were lighted. There were laughter, talk, greetings from one part of the house to another, as much movement to and fro as could be accomplished in so crowded a space. The manners of the London playhouses were aped not unsuccessfully. To compare small things with great, it might have been Drury Lane upon a gala night. If the building was rude, yet it had no rival in the colonies, and if the audience was not so gay of hue, impertinent of tongue, or paramount in fashion as its London counterpart, yet it was composed of the rulers and makers of a land destined to greatness. In the centre box sat his Excellency, William Gooch, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, resplendent in velvet and gold lace, and beside him Colonel Alexander Spotswood, arrived in town from Germanna that day, with his heart much set upon the passage, by the Assembly, of an act which would advantage his iron works. Colonel Byrd of Westover, Colonel Esmond of Castlewood, Colonel Carter, Colonel Page, and Colonel Ludwell were likewise of the Governor’s party, while seated or standing in the pit, or mingling with the ladies who made gay the boxes, were other gentlemen of consequence,--Councilors, Burgesses, owners of vast tracts of land, of ships and many slaves. Of their number some were traveled men, and some had fought in England’s wars, and some had studied in her universities. Many were of gentle blood, sprung from worthy and venerable houses in that green island which with fondness they still called home, and many had made for themselves name and fortune, hewing their way to honor through a primeval forest of adversities. Lesser personages were not lacking, but crowded the gallery and invaded the pit. Old fighters of Indians were present, and masters of ships trading from the Spanish islands or from the ports of home. Rude lumbermen from Norfolk or the borders of the Dismal Swamp stared about them, while here and there showed the sad-colored coat of a minister, or the broad face of some Walloon from Spotswood’s settlement on the Rapidan, or the keener countenances of Frenchmen from Monacan-Town. The armorer from the Magazine elbowed a great proprietor from the Eastern shore, while a famous guide and hunter, long and lean and brown, described to a magnate of Yorktown a buffalo capture in the far west, twenty leagues beyond the falls. Masters and scholars from William and Mary were there, with rangers, traders, sailors ashore, small planters, merchants, loquacious keepers of ordinaries, and with men, now free and with a stake in the land, who had come there as indentured servants, or as convicts, runaways, and fugitives from justice.