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his
Tragical History of Ethan Allen,
which he then arranged to perform at the Orpheus that evening at ten o’clock, after the circus had closed.
    During the luncheon hour, while he rehearsed with his recently acquired players, I wrote a letter to my parents, informing them of our whereabouts and bringing them up to date on my uncle’s lecture in Boston and his plan to present his
Tragical History
in New York that evening. When I returned from posting the note, he said the rehearsal had gone exceedingly well. Indeed, he doubted whether such a varied company of players had ever been assembled under one roof before, an observation with which I could only agree.
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    That afternoon we went to a printer’s and had five hundred handbills run off announcing the New York debut of the play. Afterward we repaired to the office of the
Times of New York
to visit Editor Tobias Flynt. When we arrived, Editor Flynt, a bespectacled man with a sharp nose, was composing one of his famous Federalist tracts—for he was a fierce supporter of Hamilton and adamantly opposed to President Jefferson. No sooner had my uncle announced that he was that very evening presenting a play to raise money to guide an expedition to the Pacific than he and Flynt fell into an argument. Flynt declared that the country would have absolutely no use for the great desert of Louisiana, which he repeatedly called “Jefferson’s Folly” and which, in his estimation, was a pig in a poke. My uncle countered that Louisiana was no desert but a land of milk and honey, and the most important acquisition in our Republic’s history. Flynt said that giving money, of which we had too little, for land, of which we already had too much, would bankrupt the government. Why, no one even knew the boundaries of the territory we had purchased. No American had ever been there.
    â€œWhat, sir,” demanded my uncle, “can you possibly mean? I, and my nephew, too, just last year came through Louisiana from the Pacific. We know every foot of the way as well as we know our dooryard in Vermont.”
    At this news Flynt seemed to change his tune. He inquired how long our trip had taken; and seemed most interested to learn that we had accomplished the odyssey in a single day. Flynt asked to see the manuscript of my uncle’s play. I was afraid he might not find it up to the mark. But looking it over with a knowing eye, he praised the work for its originality, faithfulness to reality, vigorous language, and justness of character. My uncle replied that though he and Flynt might disagree on some few minor political matters, he was glad that those differences had not clouded the editor’s artistic judgment; and he hoped Flynt would attend the performance that night and give it good play in the next morning’s edition. Flynt assured him that he would be honored to do so and that he would mention our forthcoming journey to the Pacific as well.
    Later we rejoined the grotesqueries at the Orpheus, where the play began at ten sharp to a rather sparse audience of about six, including the crew of the
Lord Baltimore
and Editor Flynt. The performance ran very long, with just the representation of Colonel Allen’s regiment rowing across the lake to Fort Ti taking more than an hour. When my uncle, in the role of Allen, demanded that the British general, as played by the giant, surrender the fort in the name of the Great Jehovah and the First Continental Congress, the three or four people remaining in the audience laughed heartily. All in all, he counted the night a huge success.
    Afterward, Flynt went straight to his office to write his notice, which he assured us would be read by every literate resident of New York in the morning. My uncle, the cast, and I repaired to a nearby ale-house, where he treated the actors and himself to rum. Finally we made our way back down Broadway, which seemed as crowded at two in the morning as it had been at two that