No visit to Toronto in my early days was complete unless you had an evening at the Royal or, to give it its full title, the Royal Lyceum, on the south side of King between Bay and York. This theatre was not the first to be built in the city. Its immediate predecessor, if I am rightly informed, was on the south side of King between Bay and Yonge. Here Denman Thompson, McKee Rankin, and Cool Burgess got their start. All became famous on the American stage. Cool, by the way, was one of the best of the earlier burnt cork artists, his Nicodemus Johnson being irresistibly funny. He began as a local song and dance performer, lending added humor to his terpsichorean efforts by reason of the length of his feet, which, it is hardly necessary to say, were artificially prolonged. Soon his fame spread throughout the States, and he is said to have literally coined money there. Report has it that when brother workers adjourned from the theatre to blow in their earnings in liquid refreshments or card games, Cool went to his bed and his money went home. So that, in his advanced years, when the stage had lost its charm for him or vice versa, he was a well-to-do citizen of Toronto, enjoying a life of ease. Denman Thompson created “The Old Homestead,” from which he made a barrel of money. His play was the precursor of “Way Down East,” which is now playing to fine houses in a movie in New York. The Royal was made famous by the Holmans who managed it and played in it for years. The family was highly talented and exceedingly well balanced from the point of view either of the drama or the opera. There were two girls, Sally and Julia, who sang like nightingales, and two brothers, Alf and Ben, also singers and actors of more than average ability. The former one was also a rattling snare-drummer. Mrs. Holman, the mother, was an accomplished pianist, and an all-round musician. At first the Holmans played the stock dramas with Sally as leading lady, and Alf as the heavy villain. But ultimately they went into opera and made a success of the venture. A night at the Royal certainly was a treat for the boys. The house was not at all gorgeous, nor was it outrageously clean. The mastication of tobacco, a popular method of enjoyment in those days, gave the floors, particularly in the gallery where the twenty-five centers assembled, a pattern and an odor not to be experienced in the modern theatres, where chewing gum is employed and indiscriminately parked. How the habits of the people have changed! [Illustration: TORONTO TO-DAY. The three tallest buildings in the British Empire. The C.P.R. Building in the centre. ]