The subject was thrown out for general discussion. The Little 'Un was the first to respond. He had been an _Uncle Tommer_ for years, and his views consequently on the matter were regarded with consideration. "Gentlemen," he commenced, "the 'Uncle Tom' times are dead and gone. The play has had its day. To be sure, if it was resurrected and put on with what might be called an elaborate presentation, with a phenomenal cast, it might catch on for a brief spell. Of course, the cast would be an easy enough matter to get, as casts go. Stars nowadays, such as they are--Heaven save the mark!--are more plentiful than stock. But let them rest at that. I have known the time when there were as many as fifty _Uncle Tommers_ on the road--all doing well, if not better. There were no theatrical syndicates in those times to limit the enterprise and energy of the aspiring though poor and ambitious manager. 'Uncle Tom' audiences were different from those who attended other theatrical snaps. There was so much of the religious faking mixed in with the old piece that it caught the Sunday-go-to-meeting crowd and drew them as a molasses barrel will draw flies. That class of people reasoned that 'Uncle Tom' wasn't a real theatre show--it was a moral show. What fools we mortals be? Didn't some poor play actor say that, or did I think it out myself? Well, no matter now. But don't the newspapers tell us that there was a big bunch of people in New York City at one time who used to flock to Barnum's Museum, which stood opposite St. Paul's Church, on Broadway, and how they'd scoop in the show there simply because old Barnum called his theatre a lecture-room. It was the lecture-room racket that caught them. The old showman was a cute one--slick as they made 'em. When the museum burned down, didn't he go to work and sell the hole in the ground the fire made to James Gordon Bennett, the elder, founder of _The Herald_, and got the best of the famous editor in the sale into the bargain. Ah, those were the good old times!" "The palmy days of the drama, I suppose," interjected Handy. "Palmy fiddlesticks!" laughingly chimed in one of the group. "Oh, joke as you may, boys, but I am giving you the straight goods," continued the Little 'Un, handing out a little bit of reminiscent news of days gone by that will never be duplicated.