The next noteworthy presentation of Aiken's version was at the Chestnut-street Theatre, Philadelphia. There, beginning Sept. 26, 1853, it had a cast that, taken altogether, has never been surpassed. It was thus first played in Philadelphia:

  John Gilbert, who threw both pathos and power into Uncle Tom, is now an acting-manager in this city; but his wife, the Aunt Ophelia of the bill, has passed away, as also have Augustus W. Fenno and Adolphus Hoyt Davenport ("Dolly")—respectively Harris and Haley. The Phineas Fletcher was the late Joseph Parker, whose progeny have figured everywhere upon the American stage, while Gumption Cute was the now great Joseph Jefferson, whose wife, formerly Maggie Lockyer of the Bowery and Chatham Theatres, this city, but dead these fifteen years past, was the Marie St. Claire. Mark Allen is now reveling in the ease and dignity of bucolic editorship, the journal being The Advertiser of Woburn, Mass. The Legree was Charles Kemble Mason, now dead; and while the Marks may have been John S. Clarke, who is now in England, and who not many months before had made his first appearance in Philadelphia, we think it was Conrad Clarke, who had married Miss Celia Logan, and who died in Pittsburg, Pa., six years later. Rensselaer A. Sheppard was burned to death during the conflagration of the National Theatre, Philadelphia, twenty-three years ago next Summer. John Jack still deals out comedy in quantities and qualities to suit all kinds of purchasers. The George Shelby was W. H. Briggs, who joined the Union Army and has not since been on the stage. William Lomas, who doubled for Mr. Wilson and Deacon Perry, is still in the flesh, but superannuated. Mr. Bowen was probably Bowes, who died about a year ago; and Mr. Uhl is still in the land of the living, somewhere near Chicago. Indeed, Death has dealt gently with the males in this famous cast, though he has left but little more than a moiety of the females. The first to pass away was little Louisa Parker, who had been seen in child's parts at the Chestnut before "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was produced in Philadelphia. She died in Baltimore in the Spring of 1857. Julia Parker, also a child then, is now Mrs. J. B. Polk, and pursuing her vocal studios in Italy. Miss Cordelia Cappell, who impersonated Eliza, is still an actress, as also is her mother. Mrs. Tyrrell, who four years before had made her American debut as a tragic star at the Bowery Theatre, this city, is to-day, under another name, intermittently an actress and a teacher of actresses in prospective. The light-heeled Topsy of 1853, then the bride of "Dolly" Davenport, is now the wife of Charles Mathews No. 2, and residing in retirement in England. She was succeeded as Topsy by Gertrude Dawes, who is also on the retired list, and presumptively a resident of this city. The Miss Parker remaining to be accounted for was doubtless Margaret, who embraced matrimony twenty years ago and retired from public life.

  The next notable presentation was at Barnum's Museum, this city, where, after Troy, Boston, Albany, Providence, Chatham street (N. Y.), and Philadelphia had demonstrated that Uncle Tom could be "flayed alive" without the theatre being turned inside out, courage was mustered to produce it on Nov. 7, 1853, as follows:

UNCLE TOM'S CABIN,
OR LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY

  Originally dramatized, upwards of eighteen months ago, expressly for this establishment, by H. J. Conway, Esq., from the popular and world-renowned work of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. The piece has been in preparation here, and under rehearsal during the last twenty weeks, and is now produced with original music, choruses, a moving panoramic diorama, and other expensive and highly effective auxiliaries.

  Wentworth turned preacher. The Howard who played George Harris was visible for but a brief period, having contracted a marriage that led to his retirement from the Museum. We think he had come from Buffalo, N. Y. Sallie Bishop, a pleasing danseuse, married and withdrew from professional life, though it seems to us that she returned to it. G. C. Charles afterwards starred as an Irish comedian, and is now a stock actor once more. Mary Ann Charles (Topsy), who was of the company at the National Theatre when Taylor's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was brought out there, but did not appear in it, married a Baltimorian in 1858 and retired from the stage. A few years ago she was residing in this city. Miss Emily Mestayer, now in San Francisco, appears upon the stage at intervals, being at the Opera-house there. A. Andrews of the Old Park, after leaving Burton's Chambers-street Theatre, attained to special excellence as a landscape painter in Buffalo, N. Y., though about 1866 he was said to be living in England. The connection of the late Corson W. Clarke ("Complimentary Clarke," as he was called) with "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is perpetuated in his son, who for the past year or so has had a troupe on the road playing it with his wife as Topsy; Sylvester Bleecker is traveling as manager of the Tom Thumb party; Harry Cunningham, as well as his brother William, who danced a plantation-jig, is of the Bowery restaurant of Cunningham & Lyons; George Clark, formerly of Mitchell's Olympic, was supposed to have been murdered while going from Barnum's across the City Hall Park, though it is quite possible that he fell, instead of being knocked down; Thompson was a natural comedian, but has passed down the long lane of oblivion; H. F. Daly played in "The Two Orphans" when the Brooklyn Theatre was burned, Dec. 5, 1876; Thomas Hadaway, an amateur farmer for many years past, resides on Long Island; Mrs. Bellamy is dead, as also is Miss Jackson, in whose professional advancement the late Harry A. Perry took a kindly interest. She became Perry's wife, and died in Buffalo N. Y., March 23, 1875, leaving to the stage a valuable legacy in her daughter Alfy Perry. Miss Chiarini is, we think, the same lady who, in 1858 or 1S59, as Mlle. Chiarini, played in pantomime, when the Ravels had Niblo's Garden, this city; Miss and Master Smith were doubtless a couple of the many children furnished the New York stage by different matrons; Miss Rowena Granice went to California about 1857, and thence to the Sandwich Islands, and last came under our observation as Mrs. Steele, about ten years ago, when she was still in San Francisco; Mrs. Burroughs is in retirement we believe; F. A. Monroe died a year ago in Chicago; Mrs. J. L. Munroe may be living, while her husband (Uncle Tom) has been variously reported as dead and as practicing law in Boston. We know nothing of Miss Burroughs further than that she was said to to be a daughter of the Mrs. Burroughs in the bill. The Mrs. Palmer in the bill was the Miss Palmer who for several years did light business at the Museum; and her (Jane's) quadroon companion (Rose, other wise the inconspicuously billed Miss Flynn) was no other than the favorite Susie, formerly of the Park Theatre, and who has returned to dust. The other ladies in the cast were mainly auxiliaries. Mr. Jenkins we do not recognize, nor Mr. Henry, nor Mr. Brown, and these fill up the bill. Ah! there is Mr. Simpson. In New York, Simpson is a familiar name, and the identity of the gentleman who played Mr. Wilson should be easily fixed. Mr. Simpson was no less a personage than the subsequently noted Dan Setchell, who, then a slim built youth of twenty-two, speedily took on flesh enough to threaten William F. Burton with adipose as well as professional rivalry. The little "business" he had to do as Mr. Wilson caused the curtain to be rung up nightly on the tableau. His premature death by shipwreck in the bark Trieste, bound from San Francisco to New Zealand, ten years ago, is a familiar story, notwithstanding that no one on that vessel survived to tell it, and that no other one ever saw the ship go down.

  On Sept. 12, 1853, the Franklin Museum announced a peculiar version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for performance on that and the following nights. It had but a brief existence. A synopsis of the incidents is in our possession, but not the cast, and it was not our rare pleasure to witness it within the crumbling walls of "Little Drury," as this Chatham-street house was called from the commencement (1841) of the waning days of its dramatic glory. The patrons of the Franklin were in one sense like Hector Placide in "Led Astray"—they saw many a lady performer, and a great deal of every one of them. At about the same time Robert G. Marsh was preparing to play "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to order, with his daughter Mary as Eva. She was then scarcely known to the public, although we had seen her and her brother George in a song-and-dance on the stage of the National Theatre about eighteen months before, biographical sketches and "tender age" to the contrary notwithstanding. "Little Mary" was extremely talented, as also was George as a comedian in miniature. About five years later, while, playing in a Southern city, she was so severely burned that she survived the calamity but a few hours.

  Uncle Tom first appealed to the sympathies of a Bowery Theatre audience on Jan. 16, 1854. A very attractive picture of Eva crowning Uncle Tom with flowers was displayed in front of the building, high up between the central two of the four huge circular columns, which were painted white then, and are white to-day in their thirty-scond year, though they have been of several colors in the interim. The dramatizer was the Henry E. Stevens previously mentioned. As a dramatic author he was quite successful, while as an actor he was a superb Devilshoof in "The Bohemian Girl," a capital Robert Macaire, and as a Blueskin was the prince of Blueskins in America, not excepting Ben De Bar twenty-five years ago. He was by birth an Englishman. Below is all of the cast assigned his version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" that we can no command:

  Mrs. T. D. Yeomans was also in the cast. The St. Clair was either the living James C. Dunn or the dead William H. Hamilton. The latter was a baritone, and we assign St. Clair to the possibilities of the baritone in remembrance of having seen the late Sher. C. Campbell fill the part fifteen years ago, at the theatre then called the New York Athenæum, when Campbell had not yet abandoned negro minstrelsy for the cleaner vocation of an opera-singer. Of the males named in the foregoing cast, Time has spared but two: Robert Johnston and Samuel W. Glenn, neither of whom has as yet forsworn the footlights, though Glenn long ago gave up the "Richard Dree Dimes" and the other Teutonic delineations that were the entering-wedge to a popularity that for years carried him through as a star. John Winans, the memorable Porgy Joe of Catherine Market, died in the prime of life, but in the sere of his activity. He was missed one day in Philadelphia, and but a fleshless skeleton was found at last. T. D. Rice, famous "Jumbo Jum," was called to his account fifteen years ago, and it is about twenty months since consumption claimed William H. Hamblin, son of Thomas S. by his first wife, Elizabeth Blanchard, and brother of the Bessie Hamblin who married Hamilton the singer. A flood of recollections follows the mention of these names. They whisper of two suicides, a painful death resulting from a frolicsome wrestling-match, and a sudden taking-off that was called a murder. The Mrs. Howard in the cast may have been Mrs. Henry John Howard, whose husband was at the Broadway Theatre when "The Cataract of the Ganges" was brought out with such a splash and splurge of real water. She was an English lady, and the sister of the ill-fated Laura Addison, a star who died on the steamboat Oregon on the passage between this city and Albany. Miss Caroline Whitlock was, we think, the daughter of the comedian William Whitlock, one of the two survivors of the four pioneers of organized negro minstrelsy in the early Winter of 1843. As we write these lines, the painful news reaches us that sorrow has ineffaceably laid its weighty hand upon another of William Whitlock's daughters—never a mother in her present wedded state, but always a devoted wife—still a wife, but destined soon to be a widow. The Eliza of the bill, Miss Woodward, may or may not be living. We recall her as one of the many announced pupils of the late Francis Courtney Wemyss, as a young lady of good presence in such standard characters as Julia in "The Hunchback" and Parthenia in "Ingomar," and as one whose ranting in the part of Eliza could scarcely have been surpassed even by her elders in that era of rant. Gertrude Dawes (Mrs. Cornelius Campbell), she of the winsome face who was so long a danseuse on the east side, and whose more successful delineations of character were Jack Sheppard, Topsy, Katharine Kloper in "Lola Montez" (the yet living Mrs. John Sloan's great specialty in those days), and Puzada in "The Magic Well," had the rare privilege, it will have been seen, of playing Topsy in two different versions. In some remote nook of our memory is the vague consciousness that at the Bowery Theatre we once saw "Uncle Tom's Cabin" played by many men on many horses; but we shall make no positive assertion to that effect, since the documentary evidence to support it is just now lacking. It may be that in our mind's eye we have merely D. H. Harkins (of Daly's Fifth-avenue Theatre, but who at this writing is swinging one Indian-club in "Man and Wife" at the Grand Opera. house) astride of a thoroughbred and galloping over Bosworth Field in search of one Richard III. There need be no hesitation in asserting this, for we are as sure that we saw Mr. Harkins do thus, as Richmond, as that we have since seen him swing Indian-clubs (one).

  In drawing this review to a close, the thought arises that Topsy has been a much more healthy part to play than that of Uncle Tom. The exertion required as "Happy Uncle Tom" racked the late Frank Brower, according to his own confession; and but for the "Essence of Old Virginny" Dan Bryant would be living to-day. Yet the lively work exacted of Topsy seems to have no injurious effect upon her delineators, and of the early ones of prominence Rose Merrifield alone is not visible. She is dead, undoubtedly; but as it was long unknown when or where or how death claimed her, she may be said to have disappeared about 1858, rather than to have died. The "when or where or how" of Rosalie Cline, as the little lady with but one perfect eye was called long before she became the wife of dead Jerry Merrifield the comic vocalist, is not clear to us yet. About all the early Uncle Toms have passed away except John Gilbert, George Kunkel, and Sam S. Sanford, the last-mentioned having about 1856 brought out a version of his own in Philadelphia, which he is to-day playing all over the States and Canada. The necrological list includes, besides the dead Uncle Toms already mentioned, Wesley Barmore (professionally known as S. E. Harris, and who traveled with Rose Merrifield), Charles Walcott the elder, and George Jamieson. The last-named had a dramatization of his own, its title being "The Old Plantation, or the Real Uncle Tom." Jamieson had a voice of marked mobility, and in his early days he was the rival of the elder James W. Wallack in giving imitations of popular actors. They had a numerous progeny in the Jeremiah Clips in which the American stage subsequently abounded. George Jamieson's end was sad and sudden. On Oct. 3, 1868, after having been assigned a part in "After Dark," about to be produced at Niblo's Garden, this city, he returned by train to his home, which was a short distance this side of the Yonkers station. Alighting at that station, he essayed to walk back along the railroad track. Alarmed by the screech of a locomotive whistle, in seeking to escape a fancied danger behind him he stepped from one track to the other, but only to face the dreaded train. Dazed by the imminence of his peril, and yielding to that instinct which requires that we should shrink from danger rather than press on and past it, he sought to return to the track he had left. The locomotive struck him glancingly, and the shock killed him. Providence had decreed that the happiest day he had known for a long time should also be his last; for on that day he had not only secured an engagement, but actually had his manuscript part with him when he was killed.

  It has been remarked that but one prominent Topsy of olden times is pulseless now. We had forgotten. Beginning on April 12, 1854, Wood's Minstrel Hall, 454 Broadway, had a little "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of its own. It was a burlesque, of course, Miss Annie Kneass (of a multitudinous musical family of which the late Nelson Kneass was the head) was the Eva, and the whimsical Topsy fell naturally to the share of George Christy. It is, perhaps, needless to add that this particular Topsy is dead.

  Whoever, in times to come, shall write of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1876-7 will have to record a new feature, viz., the slave troupes of Jubilee Singers, whose main function is the chanting of sacred hymns, thus appropriating what formerly was the solo prerogative of Uncle Tom. To-day, at the Howard Athenæum, Boston, where the Uncle Tom is Welsh Edwards, with Miss Marie Bates as Topsy and Miss Isabella Preston as Aunt Ophelia, there is a band of dusky warblers who, disdaining the stereotyped nomenclature of Georgia Slave Troupe or Jubilee Singers, announce themselves as the Black Bonanzas. This is at least a simulation of originality. The Eva at the Athenæum is Little Gertie, while the still busy Howard family, at the New Broadway Theatre, this city, as we write, have Gracie Ward as Eva and George Kunkel as Uncle Tom.