three
in the afternoon
It was in the early seventeen hundred and thirties when Allan Ramsay , ` in fear and trembling of legal and clerical censure , ' lent out the plays of Congreve and Farquhar from his famous High Street library . In 1756 it was , that the Presbytery of Edinburgh suspended all clergymen who had witnessed the representation of Douglas , that virtuous tragedy written , to the dismay of all Scotland , by a minister of the Kirk . That the world , even the theological world , moves with tolerable rapidity when once set in motion , is evinced by the fact that on Mrs. Siddons ' second engagement in Edinburgh , in the summer of 1785 , vast crowds gathered about the doors of the theatre , not at night alone , but in the day , to secure places . It became necessary to admit them first at three in the afternoon and then at noon , and eventually ` the General Assembly of the Church then in session was compelled to arrange its meetings with reference to the appearance of the great actress . ' How one would have enjoyed hearing that Scotsman say , after one of her most splendid flights of tragic passion , ` That 's no bad ! ' We have read of her dismay at this ludicrous parsimony of praise , but her self-respect must have been restored when the Edinburgh ladies fainted by dozens during her impersonation of Isabella in The Fatal Marriage . Since Scottish hospitality is well-nigh inexhaustible , it is not strange that from the moment Edinburgh streets began to be crowded with ministers , our drawing-room table began to bear shoals of engraved invitations of every conceivable sort , all equally unfamiliar to our American eyes .