You chorus the last two lines.

That was the very song the unfortunate coachman of Kirby Hall joined in
singing before he went out to face his end for the woman he loved. He
believed in her virtue to the very last.

'The ravished wife of my bosom,' he calls her all through the latter half
of the play. It is a real tragedy. The songs of that day have lost
their effect now, I suppose. They will ever remain pathetic to me; and
to hear the poor coachman William Martin invoking the name of his dear
stolen wife Elizabeth, jug in hand, so tearfully, while he joins the song
of Saturday, was a most moving thing. You saw nothing but handkerchiefs
out all over the theatre. What it is that has gone from our drama, I
cannot tell: I am never affected now as I was then; and people in a low
station of life could affect me then, without being flung at me, for I
dislike an entire dish of them, I own. We were simpler in our habits and
ways of thinking. Elizabeth Martin, according to report, was a woman to
make better men than Ralph Thorkill act evilly--as to good looks, I mean.
She was not entirely guiltless, I am afraid; though in the last scene,
Mrs. Kempson, who played the part (as, alas, she could do to the very
life!), so threw herself into the pathos of it that there were few to
hold out against her, and we felt that Elizabeth had been misled. So
much for morality in those days!

And now for the elopement.




CHAPTER II