What a place that Opera is, to be sure! and what enjoyments us aristocracy used to have!  Just as you have swallowed down your three courses (three curses I used to call them;—­for so, indeed, they are, causing a deal of heartburns, headaches, doctor’s bills, pills, want of sleep, and such like)—­just, I say, as you get down your three courses, which I defy any man to enjoy properly unless he has two hours of drink and quiet afterwards, up comes the carriage, in bursts my Jemmy, as fine as a duchess, and scented like our shop.  “Come, my dear,” says she, “it’s ‘Normy’ to—­night” (or “Annybalony,” or the “Nosey di Figaro,” or the “Gazzylarder,” as the case may be).  “Mr. Foster strikes off punctually at eight, and you know it’s the fashion to be always present at the very first bar of the aperture.”  And so off we are obliged to budge, to be miserable for five hours, and to have a headache for the next twelve, and all because it’s the fashion!

After the aperture, as they call it, comes the opera, which, as I am given to understand, is the Italian for singing.  Why they should sing in Italian, I can’t conceive; or why they should do nothing but sing.  Bless us! how I used to long for the wooden magpie in the “Gazzylarder” to fly up to the top of the church-steeple, with the silver spoons, and see the chaps with the pitchforks come in and carry off that wicked Don June.  Not that I don’t admire Lablash, and Rubini, and his brother, Tomrubini:  him who has that fine bass voice, I mean, and acts the Corporal in the first piece, and Don June in the second; but three hours is a little too much, for you can’t sleep on those little rickety seats in the boxes.

The opera is bad enough; but what is that to the bally?  You should have seen my Jemmy the first night when she stopped to see it; and when Madamsalls Fanny and Theresa Hustler came forward, along with a gentleman, to dance, you should have seen how Jemmy stared, and our girl blushed, when Madamsall Fanny, coming forward, stood on the tips of only five of her toes, and raising up the other five, and the foot belonging to them, almost to her shoulder, twirled round, and round, and round, like a teetotum, for a couple of minutes or more; and as she settled down, at last, on both feet, in a natural decent posture, you should have heard how the house roared with applause, the boxes clapping with all their might, and waving their handkerchiefs; the pit shouting, “Bravo!” Some people, who, I suppose, were rather angry at such an exhibition, threw bunches of flowers at her; and what do you think she did?  Why, hang me, if she did not come forward, as though nothing had happened, gather up the things they had thrown at her, smile, press them to her heart, and begin whirling round again faster than ever.  Talk about coolness, I never saw such in all my born days.

“Nasty thing!” says Jemmy, starting up in a fury; “if women will act so, it serves them right to be treated so.”