Up and Down by E.F. Benson

Duty under a somewhat threadbare disguise of pleasure has the upper hand just now, in this energetic city, and we spend a large number of our afternoons each week seated in half-guinea and guinea stalls, and watch delightful entertainments at theatres or listen to concerts at private houses, got up for the benefit of some most deserving charity, and for the really opulent there are seats at three or five guineas. These entertainments are as delightful as they are long, and we have an opportunity two or three times a week of seeing the greater part of our prominent actors and actresses, and hearing the most accomplished singers and players on all or more than all of the musical instruments known to Nebuchadnezzar pour forth a practically endless stream of melody. Certainly it is a great pleasure to hear these delightful things, but, as I have said, it is really duty that prompts us to live for pleasure, for the pleasure, by incessant wear, is getting a little thin.

We should not dream of spending so much on seats in theatres if we were not contributing to a cause. Often tea of the most elaborate and substantial style is thrown in, and thus our bodies as well as our minds are sumptuously catered for. Soon, I suppose, when we have once freed our minds from the nightmare of Zeppelins, we shall have these entertainments in the evening with dinner thrown in. The only little drawback connected with them is concerned with the matter of tickets. Naturally you do not want to go alone, and in consequence, when you are asked to take tickets you take two guinea ones if you are rich, and if not two half-guinea ones. There is no question of refusing. You have got to.