No one was allowed to enter after the overture had begun, and an absolute hush prevailed.
The orchestra consisted of sixty or more pieces, and the audience was critical.

The parquet was filled with officers in the gayest uniforms; there were few ladies amongst them; the latter sat mostly in the boxes, of which there were several tiers, and as soon as the curtain fell, between the acts, the officers would rise, turn around, and level their glasses at the boxes.

Sometimes they came and visited in the boxes.
As I had been brought up in a town half Quaker, half Puritan, the custom of going to the theatre Sunday evenings was rather a questionable one in my mind.

But I soon fell in with their ways, and found that on Sunday evenings there was always the most brilliant audience and the best plays were selected.

With this break-down of the wall of narrow prejudice, I gave up others equally as narrow, and adopted the German customs with my whole heart.
I studied the language with unflinching perseverance, for this was the opportunity I had dreamed about and longed for in the barren winter evenings at Nantucket when I sat poring over Coleridge's translations of Schiller's plays and Bayard Taylor's version of Goethe's Faust.
Should I ever read these intelligently in the original?
And when my father consented for me to go over and spend a year and live in General Weste's family, there never was a happier or more grateful young woman.