With this pleasing
information, and a sharp dialogue on his favourite subject with the hero,
he retires.
Here the interest begins; three or four foot-stamps are heard behind;
_Jack_ starts--"Ah, that noise," &c.--and on comes the author of the
piece, "his first appearance here these five years." He approaches the
foot-lights--he turns up his eyes--he thumps his breast--and goes through
this exercise three or four times, before the audience understand that
they are to applaud. They do so; and the play goes on as if nothing had
happened; for this is an episode expressive of a "first appearance these
five years." _Gipsy George_ or Mr. G. Almar, whichever you please, having
assured _Jack Ketch_ that he is starving and in utter destitution,
proceeds to give five shillings for a piece of rope, and walks away, after
taking great pains to assure everybody that he is going to hang himself.
Before, however, he has had time to make the first coil of a hempen
collar, _Jack_ looks off, and descries the stranger in the last agonies of
strangulation, amidst the most deafening applause from the audience, whose
disgust is indignantly expressed by silence when he exits to cut the man
down.
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