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Try as we may to stay those delightful moments, they fade and pass remorselessly; there is no returning, no recovering, only for the foolish the vilest peep-shows and imitations in dens and darkened rooms. We go on we grow. At least we age.
Duerer in the following passage is speaking of the separate details or objects which go to make up a picture, not of the picture as a whole; he never tried to make peep-shows; his signature or an inscription is often used to give the very surface that must destroy the peep-show illusion a definite decorative value.
Several booths are erected in the market square, the proprietors and attaches of two peregrinating theatres, several peep-shows, and a dozen various games of chance, are vying with each other in the noisiness of their demonstrations to attract the attention and small change of the crowd to their respective enterprises.
Simon Paap, the Dutch dwarf, twenty-eight inches high; bear-dancing, the learned pig, the "beautiful spotted negro boy," peep-shows, Wombell's royal menagerie, the learned cats, and a female child with two perfect heads. But it is time to ring down the curtain. The last days of the fair were not edifying. Scenes of riot and debauch, of violence and lawlessness disgraced the assembly.
And now, dear William, I know what has been passing in your mind, quite as well as if hearts were peep-shows, and one could see to the bottom of them at the rate of a penny a look.
There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure of recognising several fields of glory with which I became well acquainted a year or two ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty as Mexican victories. The change was neatly effected by some extra smoking of the Russians, and by permitting the camp followers free range in the foreground to despoil the enemy of their uniforms.
The square itself was taken up by the booths of hucksters, rope-dancers and astrologers, while promenaders in travesty thronged the arcades, and the ladies of the nobility, in their white masks and black zendaletti, surveyed the scene from the windows of the assembly-rooms in the Procuratie, or, threading the crowd on the arms of their gallants, visited the various peep-shows and flocked about the rhinoceros exhibited in a great canvas tent in the Piazzetta.
The Tarn, by reason of its remoteness, its inaccessibility and, to descend to material considerations, its expensiveness as an excursion can never, fortunately, become one of the cheap peep-shows of the world. The intense silence heightens the impressiveness of the wonderful hour, only the gentle ripple of the water, only the shrill note of the cicada at intervals, breaks the stillness.
"If we had houses like that in Belfast," Henry had said, as they came away, "we wouldn't let them become slums!" "No," retorted Marsh, unable to restrain himself from sneering, "you'd make peep-shows out of them and charge for admission!" "Well, that would be better than turning them into slums," Henry answered good-humouredly. "Would it?" Marsh replied. "Would it?" Henry wondered.
Yet the crowd was denser now than during the morning hours, the frivolous contingent of visitors, including journeymen out for a holiday, a stray soldier or two come on furlough, village shopkeepers, and the like, having latterly flocked in; persons whose activities found a congenial field among the peep-shows, toy-stands, waxworks, inspired monsters, disinterested medical men who travelled for the public good, thimble-riggers, nick-nack vendors, and readers of Fate.
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