| 227 | 228 | 229 | 230 | 231 |
| 1 | 133 | 265 | 398 | 530 |
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be irrevocable and most exact), the stupendous collection shut up
next day.
'Are we going from this place directly, ma'am?' said Nell.
'
Look here, child,' returned Mrs Jarley. 'That'll inform you.' And so
saying Mrs Jarley produced another announcement, wherein it was
stated, that, in consequence of numerous inquiries at the wax-work
door, and in consequence of crowds having been disappointed in
obtaining admission, the Exhibition would be continued for one week
longer, and would re-open next day.
'
For now that the schools are gone, and the regular sight-seers
exhausted,' said Mrs Jarley, 'we come to the General Public, and they
want stimulating.'
Upon the following day at noon, Mrs Jarley established herself behind
the highly-ornamented table, attended by the distinguished effigies
before mentioned, and ordered the doors to be thrown open for the
readmission of a discerning and enlightened public. But the first day's
operations were by no means of a successful character, inasmuch as
the general public, though they manifested a lively interest in Mrs
Jarley personally, and such of her waxen satellites as were to be seen
for nothing, were not affected by any impulses moving them to the
payment of sixpence a head. Thus, notwithstanding that a great many
people continued to stare at the entry and the figures therein
displayed; and remained there with great perseverance, by the hour at
a time, to hear the barrel-organ played and to read the bills; and
notwithstanding that they were kind enough to recommend their
friends to patronise the exhibition in the like manner, until the door-
way was regularly blockaded by half the population of the town, who,
when they went off duty, were relieved by the other half; it was not
found that the treasury was any the richer, or that the prospects of
the establishment were at all encouraging.
In this depressed state of the classical market, Mrs Jarley made
extraordinary efforts to stimulate the popular taste, and whet the
popular curiosity. Certain machinery in the body of the nun on the
leads over the door was cleaned up and put in motion, so that the
figure shook its head paralytically all day long, to the great admiration
of a drunken, but very Protestant, barber over the way, who looked
upon the said paralytic motion as typical of the degrading effect
wrought upon the human mind by the ceremonies of the Romish
Church and discoursed upon that theme with great eloquence and
morality. The two carters constantly passed in and out of the
exhibition-room, under various disguises, protesting aloud that the
sight was better worth the money than anything they had beheld in all
their lives, and urging the bystanders, with tears in their eyes, not to
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