Sergeant Wilks will show the boys and girls, who pay him their pennies, views in all parts of the world, such as would cost them thousands of pounds if they travelled to see them, and all as natural as life.

He will show them great battles by land and sea, where the soldiers and sailors shed their blood like water in the service of their country.

But cruel murders and notorious crimes he will not show them." It was not the boys and girls, only, who were the sergeant's patrons.
Picture books were scarce in those days, and grown-up girls and young men were not ashamed to pay their pennies to peep into the sergeant's box.
There was scarcely a farm house throughout his beat where he was not known and welcomed.

His care of the child, who, when he first came round, was but a year old, won the heart of the women; and a bowl of bread and milk for the little one, and a mug of beer and a hunch of bread and bacon for himself, were always at his service, before he opened his box and showed its wonders to the maids and children of the house.
Sidmouth was one of his regular halting places, and, indeed, he visited it more often than any other town on his beat.

There was always a room ready for him there, in the house of a fisherman's widow, when he arrived on the Saturday, and he generally stopped till the Monday.