This was about a year after Simeon’s ordination and soon after I had inaugurated, in my capacity as Vice-President, an intensive campaign of personal exhortation at all the most notorious West End theatres. Thus I had arranged that there should be posted at the stage entrances of all these more popular haunts of vice earnest young workers of the male sex plentifully provided with the Union’s literature. These would then approach the in-coming actors and actresses with a few well-chosen words of warning, pointing out to them the iniquity of their occupation and inviting them to embrace some other profession. Having had our evening meals, Ezekiel and myself would each then visit a group of theatres to encourage our representatives and lend them the personal aid of our riper experience and more gifted oratory. This then was the occasion of my being present at about half-past seven on a January evening at the stage door of the Empresses Theatre, where a play called _The Peach Girl_ was about to be performed. This was a drama, accompanied by music, and frequently interrupted, I believe, by amatory dances, which had already been presented nearly three hundred times and was still attracting enormous audiences. I had not myself seen it, but Ezekiel, who had witnessed a considerable portion of it before making his protest at its first performance, had particularly deplored the abbreviated costumes of most of the female dancers. He had made an exception, however, in favour of the principal actress, by whose singular beauty he had been greatly impressed, and in whom he had discerned, he thought, in spite of her surroundings, an appreciable degree of natural goodness. By name Mary Moonbeam, she had been assigned the part, it appeared, of a quite simple seller of fruit, to whom a naval officer, accompanied upon the stage by a large number of female midshipmen, had immediately begun, in a voluptuous baritone, to address words of affection. What had happened subsequently Ezekiel did not of course know, since he had then made his protest and been compelled to leave. But he had felt assured, from the sweetness of her expression, that she had been more sinned against than sinning, and that in other surroundings she might easily have developed into an almost ideal district visitor. On the other hand, it was quite clear, from the letter-press outside the theatre, that she was the chief attraction of the play, and she had twice refused to discuss her future with our young representative at the stage door.