Note 246 — Chapter XI

The more detailed account of the scene which he wrote to his daughter is also well worth giving. "A most tremendous hall here last night. Something almost terrible in the cram. A fearful thing might have happened. Suddenly, when they were all very still over Smike, my Gas Batten came down, and it looked as if the room were falling. There were three great galleries crammed to the roof, and a high steep flight of stairs; and a panic must have destroyed numbers of people. A lady in the front row of stalls screamed, and ran out wildly towards me, and for one instant there was a terrible wave in the crowd. I addressed that lady, laughing (for I knew she was in sight of everybody there), and called out as if it happened every night—'There's nothing the matter I assure you; don't be alarmed; pray sit down——' and she sat down directly, and there was a thunder of applause. It took some five minutes to mend, and I looked on with my hands in my pockets; for I think if I had turned my back for a moment, there might still have been a move. My people were dreadfully alarmed—Boycott" (the gas-man) "in particular, who I suppose had some notion that the whole place might have taken fire—'but there stood the master,' he did me the honour to say afterwards, in addressing the rest, 'as cool as ever I see him a lounging at a Railway Station.'"