I

GOT married. Just when my friends were beginning to think I never would, I did. To every benighted man who loves her, a woman must eventually say yes or good-by forever. I never have enjoyed murmuring fare-thee-well. This time I couldn't gulp it out. Don't ask me why; the answer's silly. I just couldn't, that's all. So I surrendered. Twenty hours later an accommodating preacher turned a hard-boiled spinster into a blushing bride.

So far so good. Everybody was happy over the unexpected wedding, including the groom and both mothers-in-law. There wasn't a hitch in the ceremony nor a rift in the lutewhatever that is. All the heavenly signs must have been favorable, though we didn't consult the almanac to make sure. Certain it is there were no stormy whitecaps on the waters when my husband and I plunged headlong into the well-known uncharted sea.

This is not a document of disillusionment. Nobody need think I am about to declare that Sherman was right when he said-Marry in haste and repent at leisure, or some thing of that kind. On the contrary, I can't imagine anybody committing wedlock in deliberate cold blood

when our way of stepping right off from the clouds without a tinware shower or a second thought, was so much fun. All the leisure I have now you could put in your iris. But I don't spend any of it regretting that I finally had an attack of good sense. I am married but happy, believe it or not, you dour-faced skeptics.

29

The story is this:

Once upon a time there lived a woman named Lucy Stone. "It's a pretty name," she said-as who could contradict her?—“I'll keep it."

She got married; but she kept it!

That's almost all I know about this independent lady, and I made it up. But there was a Lucy Stone, and she formed a lovely league to emancipate women from bearing the great burden of their husbands' names. Brave soul, she'll never know the problems she has made me face, for deep within me beats a Lucy-Stoney heart. And I haven't the courage of my convictions.

By nature I am an extreme individualist. Though properly married, albeit romantically, I am just as much myself as I ever was. It would kill me to have to try to submerge my identity in my husband's. Nor does he wish me to make the fatal at

tempt. He respects the personality that attracted him, and he has no inclination to dominate over it. But he is a man with his first brand-new wife, and I am a twentieth century feminist with a mid-Victorian complex.

Professionally, my name is as fixed as the hills. Dorothy Miller I was when I took up my pen, Dorothy Miller I'll be when I lay it down to die. My dear public, if I have any, may rest assured of this. It was my parents, and not my husband, who gave me my start in life and letters. The name they gave me, too, is the name I shall crown with whatever modest laurels I may acquire.

Yet I go about my domestic world wondering who I am. Am I Dorothy Miller? Or Dorothy Miller Tweedledee? Or Mrs. Tweedledum Tweedledee? I pause here to remark that those are Lewis Carroll's names, and not my husband's. I borrow them without apology since I am myself an Alice in Wonderland.

My husband's honorable cognomen is long and complicated and unusual. If it were beautiful perhaps I should find scorning it easier. But since it isn't exactly pretty, I have a tender protective feeling toward it, as toward an ugly duckling. Early in our acquaintance, not being able to find anything else wrong with my new suitor, I informed him in a rude candid letter, that I didn't like his

name.

"So you don't like my name?" he wrote back. "Well, good Lord, girl, neither do I. But you'll get used to it."

I laughed in my sleeve, prematurely, and carried the discussion no further. But the man was right. I've

grown so used to it that I think it is a nice name, because it is his. But will I ever feel it is mine?

23

As I remarked before, my husband is a man with a brand-new first wife. The pride of possession glows in his face. On our wedding trip I had to confiscate our marriage certificate to keep him from showing it to everybody. He thought it beautiful, himself. Why wouldn't taxi drivers and chambermaids enjoy looking at it? Naturally, the sweetest words he knows are "Mrs. Tweedledee." Lucy Stone means nothing to him!

Yet her cause dies hard within me. Am I a traitor to it, that I am letting it die? And a coward not to fight for its life? But I do fight, every time I sign my name. "Dorothy Miller," I write boldly, as of yore-comes a pause and a struggle. And then I meekly add, "Tweedledee."

With Tweedledum escorting me, I set out for a bank carrying a fat check I had earned myself.

"I'll open my savings-account in just my own name," I remarked casually on the way or somewhat casually.

"No, dear," said my husband, much too gently. "You'll use your full name hereabouts-Dorothy Miller Tweedledee."

Theoretically, I should have asserted myself. It was my money and my business. Don't I know it? Yes, that was just it. It was all my money, and mine only. Tweedledum wouldn't take a dime of it, not even if he needed socks. Yet a short while before, at a bank down the street from the one I chose, he had changed his account into a joint-account, sub

ject to my checking. I had shown myself willing to write Dorothy Miller Tweedledee on the checks of that bank. Wouldn't it be small for me to refuse to use the same signature for my private funds? It couldn't hurt me, and it would gratify the man who supports me. Little enough to do for Tweedledum!

Alas and alack! I am sure that a married woman has a perfect right to retain her own name and to use it consistently, on pass-books and calling cards. But I am so old-fashioned. I like to please my husband! Ah, woe is me!

An editorial friend of mine, who knows nothing of this mental conflict nor yet my married name, writes musingly: "I wonder how my dear old proper South is going to understand your being plain Dorothy

Miller when you have a perfectly legitimate husband."

She needn't worry. In New York they call me Miss Miller. I glory in staying myself! But along the Kanawha, I am Mrs. Tweedledee. And do you know-I glory in being her, too?

That is why the Lucy Stone League isn't as strong as the Republican party. Married women are proud of their subjection and their slavery-or whatever you want to call being comfortably wived. And even those of us who cherish dreams of feminine freedom-haven't the courage of our convictions.

But what do I care? I'm a bride of

six weeks and I've six weeks and I've got Tweedledum! Where lives the woman with soul so dead that she wouldn't forsake a cause for a lover? Not along the Kanawha!

T

HE air was full of music as the Plantation Brass Band swung into Main Street headed by a black giant in cardinal red. He proudly twirled a drum-major's baton as he led the company of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in the morning streetparade that preceded the afternoon performance of "the great instructive and moral drama."

Farmers from miles around, who always came to town to see "Uncle Tom's Cabin," held their nervous horses as the procession of brass drew near, every member of the dusky symphony mounted on his own prancing spirits.

The eager crowd pressed forward into the street while the band strutted by in pompous glory, their instruments bellowing minor chords.

Suddenly the throng shrunk back and hundreds of trembling feet clung to the curb in joyful terror.

The

"Hey, Ma! Look! The bloodhounds! The bloodhounds!" high-pitched voice of a ten-year-old pierced the blare of trumpets. His mother gripped his hand to hold him back, but it wasn't necessary. He was a country boy accustomed to dogs, but he wouldn't have gone near those dogs for all the money in the world. Bloodhounds were man hunters. These bloodhounds were

woman hunters! Every evening and two afternoons a week they chased Eliza across the ice.

Audiences in those days were demonstrative. The same people turned out for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" year after year. The same women wept and screamed season after season when the "yaller gal" held her sawdust babe close to her breast and with courage born of desperation rushed into the raging, icejammed Ohio River. The same men lost control of themselves, year in and year out, and in loud voices from the balcony challenged the heartless Legree to come out on Main Street and fight like a man.

The scene is laid in the middle. seventies in almost any American city. The "bloodhounds" were a sensation. Never before had they been seen in a production of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," although the play had been running for a quarter of a century at the time Jay Rial conceived the idea of adding great Danes to the cast. Al Martin's company tried real bloodhounds but they were not a success. They looked too indolent and peaceful. He finally gave in and standardized on the fiery Danes like the others and called them bloodhounds.

In the early days of "Uncle Tom's

was

Cabin" the only street attraction preceding the performance "little Eva," who attracted great crowds when she appeared with her long golden curls and angelic face, accompanied by her father, who was a picturesque figure in the same black broadcloth coat with brass buttons and the same lavender trousers that he wore on the stage in the rôle of St. Clare. George C. Howard was his name. He was the proprietor of the first Tom show. The play had been written by his nephew, George L. Aiken, especially for his fouryear-old daughter, "Little Cordelia Howard, the Youthful Wonder," who had made such a pronounced success in "Oliver Twist," that she was to be starred in the first dramatization of Mrs. Stowe's novel. The play opened at the Museum in Troy, New York, September 27, 1852, and ran for three months, a record which still remains unbroken in Troy, although the population has doubled many times since then.

Closing in Troy, the play ran for nearly a year at the National Theater in New York. Cordelia's mother played Topsy while her grandmother had the rôle of Ophelia. A sprinkling of uncles and cousins among the men in the cast made the performance look like a family reunion. Little Cordelia starred in the rôle of Eva for eight years with great success in this country and Europe and then retired from the stage at the age of twelve. She is still living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as Mrs. Cordelia Howard Macdonald.

Although it was seventy-five years ago to-day that the child actress reached the height of her first phenomenal success, her memory is

keen and vigorous. The first little Eva has recalled many interesting things in connection with the first production of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and she is probably the only living person who can remember the première performance of the slave play.

22

But what of all the other little Evas? Who were they and where are they now? They must have interesting tales to tell, if one only knew where to find them. It must be that many distinguished living actresses were the Evas, the Topsys and the Elizas of yesterday, but the historians of the theater have held themselves smugly aloof from "Uncle Tom's Cabin," for although it has been the most influential and the most successful play that the world has known, it has been looked upon for half a century as a "rube show" and was regarded with disdain by scholarly chroniclers during its heyday.

After the bloodhounds, jubilee singers, the street parade and other circus features were added to the venerable production, actresses who played in Tom shows, as they were termed professionally, did not usually boast about it in their reminiscences.

The tide seems to have turned, for the slave drama is enjoying a new vogue. Mary Pickford and Eva Tanguay are proud to recall how their endearing young charms were poured into the rôle of Eva. Marjorie Rambeau, Francine Larrimore and Effie Shannon were distinguished in the same rôle. Fay Templeton, Jennie Yeamans, Pearl White, Mary McVicker, who later married Edwin Booth, and many