- end_line
- 5816
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5762
- text
- and so, a theatre only can receive me. So powerfully in the end did the
longing to get into the edifice come over me, that I almost began to
think of pawning my overcoat for admittance. But from this last
infatuation I was providentially withheld by a sudden cheery summons, in
a voice unmistakably benevolent. I turned, and saw a man who seemed to
be some sort of a working man.
‘Take it,’ said he, holding a plain red ticket toward me, full in the
gas-light. ‘You want to go in; I know you do. Take it. I am suddenly
called home. There--hope you’ll enjoy yourself. Good-bye.’
Blankly and mechanically I had suffered the ticket to be thrust into my
hand, and now stood quite astonished, bewildered, and for the time,
ashamed. The plain fact was, I had received charity; and for the first
time in my life. Often in the course of my strange wanderings I had
needed charity, but never had asked it, and certainly never, ere this
blessed night, had been offered it. And a stranger, and in the very maw
of the roaring London, too! Next moment my sense of foolish shame
departed, and I felt a queer feeling in my left eye, which, as sometimes
is the case with people, was the weaker one; probably from being on the
same side with the heart.
I glanced round eagerly. But the kind giver was no longer in sight. I
looked upon the ticket. I understood. It was one of those checks given
to persons inside a theatre when for any cause they desire to step out a
moment. Its presentation ensures unquestioned readmittance.
‘Shall I use it?’ mused I--‘what? It’s charity. But if it be gloriously
right to do a charitable deed, can it be ingloriously wrong to receive
its benefit? No one knows you; go boldly in. Charity. Why these
unvanquishable scruples? All your life, naught but charity sustains you,
and all others in the world. Maternal charity nursed you as a babe;
paternal charity fed you as a child; friendly charity got you your
profession; and to the charity of every man you meet this night in
London, are you indebted for your unattempted life. Any knife, any hand
of all the millions of knives and hands in London, has you this night at
its mercy. You, and all mortals, live but by sufferance of your
charitable kind; charitable by omission, not performance. Slush for your
self-upbraidings, and pitiful, poor, shabby pride, you friendless man
without a purse. Go in.’
Debate was over. Marking the direction from which the stranger had
accosted me, I stepped that way; and soon saw a low-vaulted,
inferior-looking door on one side of the edifice. Entering, I wandered
on and up, and up and on again, through various doubling stairs and
wedge-like, ill-lit passages, whose bare boards much reminded me of my
ascent of the Gothic tower on the ocean’s far other side. At last I
gained a lofty platform, and saw a fixed human countenance facing me
from a mysterious window of a sort of sentry-box or closet. Like some
saint in a shrine, the countenance was illuminated by two smoky candles.
I divined the man. I exhibited my diploma, and he nodded me to a little
door beyond; while a sudden burst of orchestral music admonished me. I
was now very near my destination, and also revived the memory of the
organ anthems I had heard while on the ladder of the tower at home.
- title
- Chunk 3