The scene shifts back to Gatesboro', the forenoon of the day succeeding
the memorable exhibition at the Institute of that learned town. Mr.
Hartopp was in the little parlour behind his country-house, his hours of
business much broken into by those intruders who deem no time
unseasonable for the indulgence of curiosity, the interchange of thought,
or the interests of general humanity and of national enlightenment. The
excitement produced on the previous evening by Mr. Chapman, Sophy, and
Sir Isaac was greatly on the increase. Persons who had seen them
naturally called on the Mayor to talk over the exhibition. Persons who
had not seen them, still more naturally dropped in just to learn what was
really Mr. Mayor's private opinion. The little parlour was thronged by a
regular levee There was the proprietor of a dismal building, still
called "The Theatre," which was seldom let except at election time, when
it was hired by the popular candidate for the delivery of those harangues
upon liberty and conscience, tyranny and oppression, which furnish the
staple of declamation equally to the dramatist and the orator. There was
also the landlord of the Royal Hotel, who had lately built to his house
"The City Concert-Room,"--a superb apartment, but a losing speculation.
There, too, were three highly respectable persons, of a serious turn of
mind, who came to suggest doubts whether an entertainment of so frivolous
a nature was not injurious to the morality of Gatesboro'. Besides these
notables, there were loungers and gossips, with no particular object
except that of ascertaining who Mr. Chapman was by birth and parentage,
and suggesting the expediency of a deputation, ostensibly for the purpose
of asking him to repeat his performance, but charged with private
instructions to cross-examine him as to his pedigree. The gentle Mayor
kept his eyes fixed on a mighty ledger-book, pen in hand. The attitude
was a rebuke on intruders, and in ordinary times would have been so
considered. But mildness, however majestic, is not always effective in
periods of civic commotion. The room was animated by hubbub. You caught