The first tragedy in the new theatre involved the fate of a decent woman, the widow of a porter named Ostler, who lived in the Grassmarket, and who had died shortly before. She gained her livelihood in an industrious, if not laborious way, mainly by washing and dressing, eking it out by any desultory work she could find, sometimes in the country during harvest. She had been accustomed to visit Broggan's house in her vocation of washerwoman, and was well known to the neighbours, both from her long residence among them, and her frequent visits to the mangle at that time kept by a woman of the name of Mrs Law. One day this woman was seen to enter Broggan's house at a time when Burke was known to be there, and some of the neighbours noticed, though without paying any particular attention to the circumstance, that some time after she entered, there came from the apartment sounds of jollity, as if the inmates had got merry under the influence of drink. Burke himself exerted his musical powers, and Mrs Ostler, not to be behind, favoured the happy party with her favourite song--"Home, sweet home," which she sung in a wavering treble, not without sweetness. The symposium was no further noticed, nor was it exactly known who formed the party, but that Broggan's wife was in the house at the time, may be inferred from the fact, afterwards ascertained, that about that period she lay in of a child. From that hour Mrs Ostler was never seen. She was despatched some time after the singing of "Home, sweet home," and carried to Surgeon's Square the same evening. The ancients were fond of the subject of the shortness, the brittleness, and the vanity of human life. Homer has his soap-bubble, Plutarch his point of time, Plato his peregrination, and so forth, and the moderns imitate them. Yet, at the worst, man has generally made some little sign even at the death of a beggar. It was reserved for Portsburgh to be the place where life disappeared like a snuffed-out candle in mid-day--the hand unseen, the light scarcely missed--even the material which supplied it gone as if by magic. If Mrs Ostler was soon missed, the speculation died away under the ordinary supposition, that she had fallen into some water; and there was an end.