The play-day was late in the spring, and near the close of the season; and while the sun was yet far above the horizon, Mr. and Mrs. Jones issued from their door, and walked off, arm-in-arm, with that peculiar gait that people always adopt when going to the theatre: he swinging his clouded cane with its ivory top and buckskin tassel, and she fanning herself already with a huge green fan with black sticks; and ambling along in her best shoes and stockings, and her annual silk gown, which, on this occasion, she always put on new. As they went but once a year, they determined on doing the thing respectably, and on having the best possible view of the stage; therefore they always took seats in an upper front box. Arriving so early, they had ample time to witness the gradual filling of the house, and to conjecture who was coming whenever a box door was thrown open. To be sure, Peter had frequent recourse to his thick, heavy, but unerring silver watch, and when he found that it still wanted three quarters of an hour of the time for the curtain to rise, his wife sagely remarked to him that it was better to be even two hours too early than two minutes too late; and that they might as well get over the time in sitting in the play-house as in sitting at home. Their faces always brightened exceedingly when the musicians first began to emerge from the subterrany below, and took their places in the orchestra. Mrs. Jones pitied extremely those that were seated with their backs to the stage, and amusing herself with counting the fiddles, and observing how gradually they diminished in size from the bass viol down; till her husband explained to her that they diminished up rather than down, the smallest fiddle being held by the boss or foreman of the band. Great was their joy (and particularly that of Peter), when the increasing loudness of the instruments proclaimed that the overture was about to finish; when glimpses of feet appearing below the green curtain, denoted that the actors were taking their places on the stage, when the welcome tingle of the long-wished-for bell turned their eyes exultingly to the upward glide of the barrier that had so long interposed between them and felicity. Many a listless and fastidious gentleman, having satiated himself with the theatre by the nightly use of a season ticket (that certain destroyer of all relish for dramatic amusements), might have envied in our plain and simple-minded mechanic the freshness of sensation, the unswerving interest, and the unqualified pleasure with which he regarded the wonders of the histrionic world.