Their passion for our colored minstrelsy is, in
fact, something pathetic. They like Pierrots well enough, and
Pierrots _are_ amusing, there is no doubt of it; but they
dote upon Niggers, as they call them with a brutality unknown
among us except to the vulgarest white men and boys, and the
negroes themselves in moments of exasperation. Negro minstrelsy
is almost extinct in the land of its birth, but in the land of
its adoption it flourishes in the vigor of undying youth: no
watering-place is genuine without it. Bands of Niggers haunt the
streets and suburbs of London, and apparently every high day or
holiday throughout the British Islands requires the stamp of
their presence as a nostrum requires the name of the patentee
blown in the bottle. The decay of their gay science began among
us with the fall of slavery, and the passing of the old
plantation life; but as these never existed in Great Britain the
English version of negro minstrelsy is not affected by their
disappearance. It is like the English tradition of the Red Skins,
which has all but vanished from our superstition, but remains as
powerful as ever in the constant fancy of those islanders.
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