Page:Doom of the Great City - Hay - 1880.djvu/51

 lights were flaming within; but few bodies lay about the entrance as I stepped inside, impelled by a swift fascination I was powerless to resist. I passed down the gay and glittering corridor that led into this temple of pleasure; becoming in some degree accustomed to the sight of death, I walked unheeding past the silent, crouching forms of those who had been the guardians of the place. Proceeding, I opened a swing door, drew aside a curtain and stood within the theatre. Pity me, my grandchildren, pity me. Oh, if you have hearts that feel—and I know you have—you will pity your miserable grandfather. Of all the awful sights imprinted on these eyes that day, relentlessly impressed upon a too-faithful memory, I witnessed then the most horrible, the most gruesome, the most ghostly and unutterably terrific of all. I stood upon the floor of the theatre, close to the stage, within the portion of the house then called “the stalls,” and from that point I had a full and instant view of the whole interior. The gas still burnt, and threw a light upon the scene more brilliant than perhaps it had been on the previous night; and the people—no, not the people, the !—there under the glaring light they sat, they lay, they hung over the benches, the galleries, the boxes, in one tremendous picture of catastrophe! Beside me were soft and delicate women with their shimmering silks and dainty dresses, with jewels sparkling on their necks and arms, with bouquets and fans and other frivolous etcetera, still emanating the perfume and rich odours of the toilette; and with them were men in their sombre garments and starched courtliness, all huddled in their places in every attitude of frantic woe. Behind them stretched the “pit," filled with its crowd of commoner folk, mingled and inextricably involved in