always,
I am bound to say, of the refinement promised. I can't tell you in what
their refinement consisted, but I am sure it was there, just as I am
sure of the humor of the two brothers who next appeared as 'Singing and
Dancing Comedians' of the coon type. I know that they sang and they
danced, and worked sable pleasantries upon one another with the help of
the pianist, who often helps out the dialogue of the stage in
vaudeville. They were not so good as the next people, a jealous husband
and a pretty wife, who seized every occasion in the slight drama of 'The
Singing Lesson,' and turned it to account in giving their favorite airs.
I like to have a husband disguise himself as a German maestro, and
musically make out why his wife is so zealous in studying with him, and
I do not mind in the least having the sketch close without reason: it
leaves something to my imagination. Two of 'America's Leading Banjoists'
charmed me next, for, after all, there is nothing like the banjo. If one
does not one's self rejoice in its plunking, there are others who do,
and that is enough for my altruistic spirit. Besides, it is America's
leading instrument, and those who excel upon it appeal to the patriotism
which is never really dormant in us. Its close association with color in
our civilization seemed to render it the fitting prelude of the next
act, which consisted of 'Monologue and Songs' by a divine creature in
lampblack, a shirt-waist worn outside his trousers, and an exaggerated
development of stomach. What did he say, what did he sing? I don't know;
I only know that it rested the soul and brain, that it soothed the
conscience, and appeased the hungerings of ambition. Just to sit there
and listen to that unalloyed nonsense was better than to 'sport with
Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles of Neaera's hair,' or to be
the object of a votive dinner, or to be forgiven one's sins; there is no
such complete purgation of care as one gets from the real Afro-American
when he is unreal, and lures one completely away from life, while
professing to give his impressions of it. You, with your brute
preferences for literality, will not understand this, and I suppose you
would say I ought to have got a purer and higher joy out of the little
passage of drama, which followed, and I don't know but I did. It was
nothing but the notion of a hapless, half-grown girl, who has run away
from the poorhouse for a half-holiday, and brings up in the door