Now, in the midst of what in less than twenty-four hours would be the
Fair, was to be seen a strange and piquant sight--namely, a group of
three white-tied, broad-brimmed dissenting ministers in earnest converse
with fat Mr Snaggs, the proprietor of Snaggs's--Snaggs's being the town
theatre, a wooden erection, generally called by patrons the "Blood Tub,"
on account of its sanguinary programmes. On this occasion Mr Snaggs and
the dissenting ministers were for once in a way agreed. They all
objected to a certain feature of the Fair. It was not the roundabouts,
so crude that even an infant of to-day would despise them. It was
not the shooting-galleries, nor the cocoanut shies. It was not the
arrangements of the beersellers, which were formidably Bacchic.
It was not the boxing-booths, where adventurous youths could have
teeth knocked out and eyes smashed in free of charge. It was not the
monstrosity-booths, where misshapen and maimed creatures of both sexes
were displayed all alive and nearly nude to anybody with a penny to
spare. What Mr Snaggs and the ministers of religion objected to was the
theatre-booths, in which the mirror, more or less cracked and tarnished,
was held up to nature.
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