Susy is mistaken as to the origin of the ducks. They were not a gift, I bought them. I am not finding fault with her, for that would be most unfair. She is remarkably accurate in her statements as a historian, as a rule, and it would not be just to make much of this small slip of hers; besides I think it was a quite natural slip, for by heredityⒶtextual note and habitⒶtextual note ours was a religious household, and it was a common thing with us whenever anybody did a handsome thing, to give the credit of it to Providence, without examining into the matter. This may be called automatic religion—in fact that is what it is; it is so used to its work that it can do it without your help or even your privity; out of all the facts and statistics that may be placed before it, it will always get the one result, since it has never been taught to seek any other. It is thus the unreflecting cause of much injustice. As we have seen, it betrayed Susy into an injustice toward me. It had to be automatic, for she would have beenⒶtextual note far from doing me an injustice when in her right mind. It was a dear little biographer, and she meant me no harm, and I am not censuring her now, but am only desirous of correcting in advance an erroneous impression which her words would be sure to convey to a reader’s mind. No elaboration of this matter is necessary; it is sufficient to say I Ⓐtextual note providedⒶtextual note the ducks.

It was in Hartford. The greensward sloped down hillⒶtextual note from the house to the sluggish little river that flowed through the grounds, and Patrick, who was fertile in good ideas, had early conceived the idea of having home-made ducks for our table. Every morning he drove them from the stable down to the river, and the childrenⒶtextual note were always there to [begin page 293] see and admire the waddling white procession; they were there again at sunset to see Patrick conduct the procession back to its lodgings in the stable. But this was not always a gay and happy holiday-showⒶtextual note, with joy in it for the witnesses; no, too frequently there was a tragedy connected with it, and then there were tears and pain for the children. There was a stranded log or two in the river, and on these certain families of snapping turtlesⒶtextual note used to congregate and drowse in the sun and give thanks, in their dumb way, to Providence for benevolencesⒶtextual note extended to them. It was but another instance of misplaced credit; it was the young ducks that those pious reptiles were so thankful for—whereas they were my Ⓐtextual note ducks. I bought the ducks.

When a crop of young ducks, not yet quite old enough for the table but approaching that age, began to join the procession, and paddle around in the sluggish water, and give thanks—not to me—for that privilege, the snapping turtlesⒶtextual note would suspend their songs of praise and slide off the logs and paddle along under the water and chew the feet of the young ducks. Presently Patrick would notice that two or threeⒶtextual note of those little creatures were not moving about, but were apparently at anchor, and were not looking as thankful as they had been looking a short time before. He early found out what that sign meant—a submerged snapping turtle was taking his breakfast, and silently singing his gratitude. Every day or two Patrick would rescue and fetch up a little duck with incomplete legs to stand upon—nothing left of their extremities but gnawed and bleeding stumps. Then the children said pitying things and wept—Ⓐtextual noteand at dinner we finished the tragedy which the turtles had begun. Thus, as will be seen,Ⓐtextual note it was really the turtles that gave us “so much ducks.”Ⓐtextual note At my expense.

Again Susy has made a small error. It was not I that wrote the song. I heard Billy Rice sing it in the negro-minstrelⒶtextual note showⒺexplanatory note, and I brought it home and sang it—with great spirit—for the elevation of the household. The children admired it to the limit, and made me sing it with burdensome frequency. To their minds it was superior to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”Ⓐtextual note

How many years ago that was! Where now is Billy Rice? He was a joy to me, and so were the other stars of the nigger showⒶtextual note—Billy Birch, David Wambold, Backus, and a delightful dozen of their brethren, who made life a pleasure to me forty years agoⒺexplanatory note, [begin page 294] and later. Birch, Wambold, and BackusⒶtextual note are gone years ago; and with them departed to return no more forever, I suppose, the real nigger showⒶtextual note—the genuine nigger showⒶtextual note, the extravagant nigger show—Ⓐtextual notethe show which to me had no peer and whose peer has not yet arrived, in my experience. We have the grand opera; and I have witnessed, and greatly enjoyed, the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide. But if I could have the nigger showⒶtextual note back again, in its pristine purity and perfection, I should have but little furtherⒶtextual note use for opera. It seems to me that to the elevated mind and the sensitive spirit, the hand-organ and the nigger showⒶtextual note are a standard and a summit to whose rarified altitude the other forms of musical art may not hope to reach.

I remember the first negro-minstrel show I ever sawⒺexplanatory note. It must have been in the early ’40sⒶtextual note. It was a new institution. In our village of Hannibal, on the banks of the Mississippi, we had not heard of it before, and it burst upon us as a glad and stunning surprise.Ⓐtextual note

The show remained a week, and gave a performance every night. Church members did not attend these performances, but all the worldlings flocked to them, and were enchanted. Church members did not attend shows out there in those days.

TheⒶtextual note minstrels appeared with coal-black hands and faces, and their clothing was a loud and extravagant burlesque of the clothing worn by the plantation slave of the time; not that the rags of the poor slave were burlesqued, for that would not have been possible; burlesque could have added nothing in the way of extravagance to the sorrowful accumulation of rags and patches which constituted his costume; it was the form and color of his dress that was burlesqued. Standing collars were in fashion in that day, and the minstrel appeared in a collar which engulfed and hid the half of his head and projected so far forward that he could hardly see sideways over its points. His coat was sometimes made of curtain calico, with a swallow-tail that hung nearly to his heels and had buttons as big as a blacking-box. His shoes were rusty, and clumsy, and cumbersome, and five or six sizes too large for him. There were many variations upon this costume, and they were all extravagant, and were by many believed to be funny.

The minstrel used a very broad negro dialect; he used it competently, and with easy facility, and it Ⓐtextual note was funny—delightfully and satisfyingly funny. However, there was one member of the minstrel troupe of those early days who was not extravagantly dressed, and did not use the negro dialect. He was clothed in the faultless evening costume of the white society-gentlemanⒶtextual note, and used a stilted, courtly, artificial, and painfully grammatical form of speech, which the innocent villagers took for the real thing as exhibited in high and citified society, and they vastly admired it and envied the man who could frame it on the spot, without reflection, and deliver it in this easy and fluent and artistic fashion. “Bones” sat at one end of the row of minstrels, the banjo sat at the other end, and the dainty gentleman just described sat in the middle. This middle-man was the spokesman of the show. The neatness and elegance of his dress, the studied courtliness of his manners and speech, and the shapeliness of his undoctored features, made him a contrast to the [begin page 295] rest of the troupe, and particularly to “Bones” and “Banjo.” “Bones” and “Banjo” were the prime jokers, and whatever funniness was to be gotten out of paint and exaggerated clothing, they utilized to the limit. Their lips were thickened and lengthened with bright red paint to such a degree that their mouths resembled slices cut in a ripe watermelon.

The original ground plan of the minstrel showⒶtextual note was maintained without change for a good many years. There was no curtain to the stage in the beginning; while the audience waited they had nothing to look at except the row of empty chairs back of the footlights; presently the minstrels filed in and were received with a whole-heartedⒶtextual note welcome; they took their seats, each with his musical instrument in his hand; then the aristocrat in the middle began with a remark like this:

“I hope, gentlemen, I have the pleasure of seeing you in your accustomed excellent health, and that everything has proceeded prosperously with you since last we had the good fortune to meet.”

“Bones” would reply for himself, and go on and tell about something in the nature of peculiarly good fortune that had lately fallen to his share; but in the midst of it he would be interrupted by “Banjo,” who would throw doubt upon his statement of the matter; then a delightful jangle of assertion and contradiction would break out between the two; the quarrel would gather emphasis, the voices would grow louder and louder, and more and more energetic and vindictive, and the two would rise and approach each other, shaking fists and instruments, and threatening bloodshed, the courtly middle-man, meantime, imploring them to preserve the peace and observe the proprieties—but all in vain, of course. Sometimes the quarrel would last five minutes, the two contestants shouting deadly threats in each other’s faces, with their noses not six inches apart—the house shrieking with laughter, all the while, at this happy and accurate imitation of the usual and familiar negro quarrel—then finally the pair of malignants would gradually back away from each other, each making impressive threats as to what was going to happen the “next time”Ⓐtextual note each should have the misfortune to cross the other’s path; then they would sink into their chairs and growl back and forth at each other across the front of the line until the house had had time to recover from its convulsions and hysterics, and quiet down.

The aristocrat in the middle of the row would now make a remark which was surreptitiously intended to remind one of the end men of an experience of his of a humorous nature,Ⓐtextual note and fetch it out of him—which it always did. It was usually an experience of a stale and mouldy sort, and as old as America. One of these things, which always delighted the audience of those days until the minstrels wore it threadbare, was “Bones’s” account of the perils which he had once endured during a storm at sea. The storm lasted so long that in the course of time all the provisions were consumed. Then the middle-manⒶtextual note would inquire anxiously how the people managed to survive. “Bones” would reply,

“We lived on eggs.”

“You lived on eggs! Where did you get eggs?”

“Every day, when the storm was so bad, the captainⒶtextual note laid to Ⓐtextual note.”

During the first five years,Ⓐtextual note that joke convulsed the house;Ⓐtextual note but after that,Ⓐtextual note the population of the United States had heard it so many times that they respected it no longer, and [begin page 296] always received it in a deep and reproachful and indignant silence—along with others of its calibreⒶtextual note which had achieved disfavor by long service.

The minstrel troupes had good voices, and both their solos and their choruses were a delight to me as long as the negro showⒶtextual note continued in existence. In the beginning, the songs were rudely comic—such as “Buffalo Gals,” “Camptown Races,” “Old Dan Tucker,”Ⓐtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note and so on; but a little later,Ⓐtextual note sentimental songs were introduced—such as “The Blue Juniata,” “Sweet Ellen Bayne,” “Nelly Bly,” “A Life on the Ocean Wave,” “The Larboard Watch,”Ⓐtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note etc.

The minstrel show was born in the early ’40sⒶtextual note, and it had a prosperous career for about thirty-five years; then it degenerated into a variety show, and was nearly all variety show with a negro act or two thrown in incidentally. The real negro showⒶtextual note has been stone dead for thirty years. To my mind, it was a thoroughly delightful thing, and a most competent laughter-compellerⒶtextual note, and I am sorry it is gone.

As I have said, it was the worldlings that attended that first minstrel showⒶtextual note in Hannibal. Ten or twelve years later the minstrel showⒶtextual note was as common in America as the Fourth of July, but my mother had never seen one. She was about sixty years old by this time, and she came down to St. Louis with a dear and lovely lady of her own age, an old citizen of Hannibal—Aunt Betsey SmithⒺexplanatory note. She wasn’t anybody’s aunt, in particular; she was aunt to the whole town of Hannibal; this was because of her sweet and generous and benevolent nature, and the winning simplicity of her character. Like my mother, Aunt Betsey Smith had never seen a negro showⒶtextual note. She and my mother were very much alive; their age counted for nothing; they were fond of excitement, fond of novelties, fond of anything going that was of a sort proper for members of the church to indulge in. They were always up early to see the circus procession enter the town, and to grieve because their principles did not allow them to follow it into the tent; they were always ready for Fourth of July processions, Sunday-school processions, lectures, conventions, camp-meetings, wakes,Ⓐtextual note revivals in the church—in fact, for any and every kind of dissipationⒶtextual note that could not be proven to have anything irreligious about it—and they never missed a funeral. In St. Louis, they were eager for novelties, and they applied to me for help. They wanted something exciting and proper. I told them I knew of nothing in their line except a Convention which was to meet in the great hall of the Mercantile Library and listen to an exhibition and illustration of native African music by fourteen missionariesⒶtextual note who had just returned from that dark continent. I said that if they actuallyⒶtextual note and earnestly desired something instructive and elevating, I would recommend the Convention, but that if at bottom they really wanted something frivolous, I would look further. But no, they were charmed with the idea of the Convention, and were eager to go. I was not telling them the strict truth, and I knew it at the time, but it was no great matter; it is not worth while to strain one’s self to tell the truth to people who habitually discount everything you tell them, whether it is true or isn’t.

The alleged missionaries were the ChristyⒶtextual note minstrel troupeⒺexplanatory note—in that day one of the most celebrated of such troupes, and also one of the best. We went early, and gotⒶtextual note seats inⒶtextual note the front bench. By and by, when all the seats on that spaciousⒶtextual note floor were occupied, [begin page 297] there were sixteen hundred persons present. When the grotesque negroes came filing out on the stage in their extravagant costumes, the old ladies were almost speechless with astonishment. I explained to them that the missionaries always dressed like that in Africa.

But Aunt Betsey said, reproachfully, “But they’re niggers!Ⓐtextual note”

I said “That is no matter; they are Americans in a sense, forⒶtextual note they are employed by the American Missionary Society.”

Then both the ladies began to question the propriety of their countenancing the industries of a company of negroes, no matter what their trade might be—but I said that they could see, by looking around, that the best people in St. Louis were present, and that certainly they would not be present if the show were not of a proper sort.

They were comforted, and also quite shamelesslyⒶtextual note glad to be there. They were happy, now, and enchanted withⒶtextual note the novelty of the situation; all that they had needed was a pretext of some kind or other to quiet their consciences, and their consciences were quiet now—quiet enough to be dead. They gazed on that long curved line of artistic mountebanks with devouring eyes. The middle-man began. Presently he led up to that old joke which I was telling about a while ago. Everybody in the house except my novices had heard it a hundred times; a frozen and solemn and indignant silence settled down upon the sixteen hundred, and poor “Bones” sat there in that depressing atmosphere and went through with his joke. It was brand-newⒶtextual note to my venerable novices, and when he got to the end, and said, “We lived on eggs,” and followed it by explaining that every day during the storm the captainⒶtextual note “laid to,”Ⓐtextual note they threw their heads back and went off into heart-whole cackles and convulsions of laughter that so astonished and delighted that great audience that it rose in a solid body to look, and see who it might be that had not heard that joke before. The laughter of my novices went on and on till their hilarity became contagious, and the whole sixteen hundred joined in and shook the place with the thunders of their joy. Aunt Betsey and my mother achieved a brilliant success for the ChristyⒶtextual note minstrels that night, for all the jokes were as new to them as they were old to the rest of the house. They received them with screams of laughter, and passed the hilarity on, and the audience left the place sore and weary with laughter and full of gratitude to the innocent pair that had furnished to their jaded souls that rare and precious pleasure.