People who have heard Kellogg, and Marie Rose, and Gerster, are sick when
a black cat with a long red dress comes out and murders the same pieces
the prima donnas have sung. We have seen a colored girl attempt a
selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech,
and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel,
limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send
volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she
would catch on to the highest note she could reach and hang to it like a
dog to a root, till you would think they would have to throw a pail of
water on her to make her let go, and all the time she would be biting and
shaking like a terrier with a rat, and finally give one kick at her red
trail with her hind foot, and back off the stage looking as though she
would have to be carried on a dust pan, and the people in the audience
would look at each other in pity and never give her a cheer,
when, if she had come out and patted her leg, and put one hand up to her
ear, and sung, "Ise a Gwine to See Massa Jesus Early in de Mornin'," they
would have split the air wide open with cheers, and called her out five
times.
The fact is, they haven't got sense.
There was a hungry-looking, round-shouldered, sick-looking colored man in
the same party, that was on the programme for a violin solo.
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