eight o'clock
`` We hurried up to the tent and began to sell tickets . Buyers naturally made inquiries , but the ticket-seller economized considerably on the truth in his answers . We paid the farmer for his wagon that had been used by the band one half in cash and the balance in passes . Sharp at eight o'clock we rung the curtain up to a jammed house of the most astonished countrymen , women and children you ever set eyes upon . They did not know what to make of it , but they swallowed it all in the most good-natured manner possible . We introduced bits of ` The Old Homestead , ' ` The Two Orphans , ' ` Rip Van Winkle , ' slices of Shakespeare , Augustus Thomas , George Ade , and other great writers , so you see we were giving them bits of the best living and dead dramatists . Our native Shakespeares do the same thing nowadays in all of their original works , and that 's no idle fairy tale .