—Lever.
"Well, sir, you see," said Handy some weeks after in relating the adventure to a friend, "we had previously determined to start from Staten Island, when one of the company got it into his head that we might show on the island for 'one night only,' and make a little something into the bargain. Besides, he reasoned, all first-class companies nowadays adopt that plan of breaking in their people. Some cynical individuals describe this first night operation as 'trying it on the dog,' but as that is a vulgar way of putting it we'll let it pass. We turned the matter over in our minds, and almost unanimously agreed that it was too near the city to make the attempt, but the strong arguments of Smith prevailed—he was the one who first advocated it—and we therefore resolved to set up our tent and present 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' with an unparalleled cast from the California Theatre.
"You must remember we desired to have the company hail from a point as far distant as possible from New York, and we could hardly have gone further or we would have slid right plumb off the continent. But we told no lie about the company being unparalleled. No, sir. You couldn't match it for money. It was what might be legitimately considered a 'star cast company.'
"One of the company was a dwarf. That was lucky, or we would have been stuck for a Little Eva. So the dwarf was cast for Eva; and he doubled up and served as an ice floe, with a painted soap box on his back to represent a floating cake of ice in the flight scene. He played the ice floe much better than he did Eva. But that's neither here nor there now, as he got through with both. What's more, he's alive to-day to tell the tale. Between ourselves, he was the oddest looking Eva—and the toughest one, too, for that matter—you ever clapped eyes upon.
"In the dying scene, where Eva is supposed to start for heaven, we struck up the tune of 'Dem Golden Slippers' in what we considered appropriate time. Well! whatever it was—whether it was the music, the singing, or little Eva's departure for the heavenly regions—it nearly broke up the show. The audience simply wouldn't stand for it. Just at that impressive moment when the Golden Gates were supposed to be ajar, and dear little Eva's spirit was about to pass the gate-keeper, a couple of rural hoodlums in the starboard side of the tent began to whistle the suggestive psalm, 'There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night.' When I heard it I felt convinced it wouldn't be safe to give that programme for more than one night in any town.
"We hurried through the performance for two special reasons: first, because the audience evidently did not appear to appreciate or take kindly to the company from the California Theatre, and secondly on account of the rising wind which was beginning to blow up pretty fresh, and the tent was not sufficiently able-bodied to stand too much of a pressure from outside as well as from within. Consequently we rang down the curtain rather prematurely on the last act. It is nothing more than candid to allow that the audience was not as quiet at the close as in the earlier scenes of the drama. We had no kick coming, however, as the gross receipts footed up seventeen dollars and fifty cents.
"We struck tent without much delay and managed to get our traps together. We were about to carry them down to the Gem of the Ocean when Smith, the property man, approached me with the information that there was a man looking for me who intimated that he was going to levy on our props. 'What's up?' I asked.
"'Don't know,' answered Smith, 'but I think you had better see him yourself.'
"I did, and it proved to be the sheriff, or some fellow of that persuasion. He came to make it warm for us because, forsooth, we showed without a license. And this, mind you, in what we regard as a free country. Ye gods! Well, be that as it may, you can readily see we were in a bad box, and how to get out of it was the perplexing problem that confronted me.
"I claimed ignorance of the law, but it was no go. I then attempted a bluff game, but it wouldn't work for a cent. I tried him on all the points of the compass of strategem, but he was a Staten Islander, and I failed satisfactorily to inoculate him with my histrionic eloquence. The members of the company, however, were not wasting time and were getting the things down to the dock, only a short distance off.