ONE:"The theatre was a small one, according to our notions, but it was well ventilated, which is not always the case in America. The man that sold the tickets was very polite, and so was the one who took them at the door. The latter called an usher, who showed us to our box, and brought the chairs for us; and then he brought a programme, but we couldn't read a word of it, as it was all in Japanese. We cared more about looking at the people than trying to read something that we couldn't read at all; and so I folded up the programme and put it into my pocket.Cuthbert Silverdale was not unaware of the emotion which he had roused in so many female breasts, and it is impossible to acquit him of a sort of clerical complacency in the knowledge that so many young ladies gazed and gazed on him with a mixture of religious and personal devotion. Though a firm believer in the celibacy of the clergy, he did not feel himself debarred from sentimental relations with both married and unmarried members of his flock, indeed the very fact that nothing could conceivably come of these little mawkishnesses made them appear perfectly{108} licit. He held their hands, and took their arms, and sat at their knees, and called them dear girls two or three at a time, finding safety perhaps in numbers, and not wishing to encourage false hopes. He was an incorrigible if an innocent flirt; a licensed lap-dog practising familiarities which, if indulged in by the ordinary layman, would assuredly have led to kickings. In some curious manner he quite succeeded in deceiving himself as to the propriety of those affectionate demonstrations, and considered himself a sort of brother to all those young ladies, who worked for him with the industry (and more than the excitement) of devoted sisters. To do him justice he was just as familiar with the male members of his congregation, and patted his boys on the back, and linked his arm in theirs, but it would be idle to contend that he got as much satisfaction out of those male embraces.
