himself. As for those whom they dragged reluctantly out of the tranquillity of oblivion, they were at first wholly drawn from the class which, at the outset, gave us so much trouble—the so-called gentle class—who desired nothing so much as to continue to live under the old conditions—namely, by the labor of others. It wanted, for these people, only the revival of memory to produce the revival of discontent. When their minds were once more filled with the thought of the things they had lost—the leadership, the land, the wealth, and with the memory of the arts which they had formerly loved—music, painting, letters—and with the actual sight, once more restored to them, of their old amusements—their dancing, their society, their singing, their games; and when the foolish old idol, Love, was once more trotted out, like an old-fashioned Guy Fawkes, decked in his silly old rainbow tints; when, night after night, they actually began to play, act, and to pretend these things, what could possibly follow but revolt, with subsequent punishment and expulsion? You shall hear. Of course, they would have been punished with expulsion had not—but everything in its place.
Five or six weeks after the first evening, which I have described at full length, the Museum was again occupied by the same company, increased by a good many more. The women came in more readily, being sooner caught with the bait of fine dress, which had such an attraction for them that the mere sight of it caused them to forget everything that had been done for them—their present tranquillity, their freedom from agitation and anxiety—and carried them back to the old time, when they wore, indeed, those dainty dresses. What they endured, besides, they do not so readily remember; but the dresses carried back their minds to the society which once filled up the
