even Hamlet's catching of a rat influenced his development, there
was one incident of this Christmas that stands out and away from all
the others, an affair that he will never all his days forget, and
that even now, at this distance of time and experience, causes his
heart to beat roughly with the remembered excitement and pleasure.

Several weeks before Christmas there appeared upon the town walls
and hoardings the pictured announcements of the approaching visit to
Polchester of Denny's Great Christmas Pantomime "Dick Whittington."
Boxing Night was to see the first performance at our Assembly Rooms,
and during every afternoon and evening of the next three weeks this
performance was to be repeated.

A pantomime had, I believe, never visited our town before; there
had, of course, for many years been the Great Christmas Pantomime at
the Theatre Royal, Drymouth, but in those days trains were not easy,
and if you wished to attend an afternoon performance at the Drymouth
Theatre you must rise very early in the morning by the candle-light
and return late in the evening, with the cab forgetting to meet you
at the station as commanded, and the long walk up Orange Street, and
a headache and a bad temper next day.

It happened naturally then that the majority of the Polchester
children had never set their inquisitive noses within the doors of a
theatre, and although the two eldest daughters of the Dean, aged ten
and eleven, had been once to London and to Drury Lane Theatre, their
sense of glory and distinction so clouded their powers of accuracy
and clarity that we were no nearer, by their help and authority, to
the understanding of what a pantomime might really be.