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SHOWMAN
like Launching Day on the Bowery, when all boys who couldn't swim were thrown off the end of a dock to learn how. Besides, this was a Tom-show of parts. Far more parts than usual, since it carried a double cast as a gagtwo Little Evas, two Uncle Toms, two Topsys and two Lawyer Markses, of whom I was one. I don't mean they were carried as understudies either— they played the roles simultaneously, crazy as it may sound. In the auction block-scene, for instance, when Uncle Tom is sold down the river, there was a Marks in each corner of the stage taking the lines alternately with the other. From the artistic point of view that may have been a mistaken inspiration, but as a piece of showmanship it always went like a house afire and was, in consequence, a device by no means uncommon among Tom-shows when times were hard. And times were good and hard or I wouldn't have been in the company in the first place. As soon as I reported to the company, they said I'd have to rehearse with the dogs. The dogs these outfits carried for the Eliza-crossing-the-ice business were theoretically bloodhounds. In sober fact they were Great Danes or mastiffs, because real bloodhounds are extremely rare and even more expensive animals and don't look any tougher than so many superannuated house-cats. They're just smelling-machines with droopy ears and melancholy countenances and gentle dispositions. The audience, however, fully believed that the huge, tigerish, clip-eared and ravening creatures who
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