- "As the manager
of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into
the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey
of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking,
making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating,
fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks
ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out,
quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths,
and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers,
while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind.
Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one,
though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when
they come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off
his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little
Jack Puddings behind the canvas. The curtain will be up presently, and
he will be turning over head and heels, and crying, 'How are you?'"
(Before the Curtain, Vanity
Fair)
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