The favorite song, which the crowd compelled her to repeat, touched lightly the uncertainties of love, expressed in the falsetto pathetic refrain: 

  “Mary’s gone away wid de coon.”

All this, with the moon, the soft summer night, the mixed crowd of darkies and whites, the stump eloquence of Happy John, the singing, the laughter, the flaring torches, made a wild scene.  The entertainment was quite free, with a “collection” occasionally during the performance.

What most impressed us, however, was the turning to account by Happy John of the “nigger” side of the black man as a means of low comedy, and the enjoyment of it by all the people of color.  They appeared to appreciate as highly as anybody the comic element in themselves, and Happy John had emphasized it by deepening his natural color and exaggerating the “nigger” peculiarities.  I presume none of them analyzed the nature of his infectious gayety, nor thought of the pathos that lay so close to it, in the fact of his recent slavery, and the distinction of being one of Wade Hampton’s niggers, and the melancholy mirth of this light-hearted race’s burlesque of itself.

A performance followed which called forth the appreciation of the crowd more than the wit of Happy John or the faded songs of the yellow girl.  John took two sweet-cakes and broke each in fine pieces into a saucer, and after sugaring and eulogizing the dry messes, called for two small darky volunteers from the audience to come up on the platform and devour them.  He offered a prize of fifteen cents to the one who should first eat the contents of his dish, not using his hands, and hold up the saucer empty in token of his victory.  The cake was tempting, and the fifteen cents irresistible, and a couple of boys in ragged shirts and short trousers and a suspender apiece came up shamefacedly to enter for the prize.  Each one grasped his saucer in both hands, and with face over the dish awaited the word “go,” which John gave, and started off the contest with a banjo accompaniment.  To pick up with the mouth the dry cake and choke it down was not so easy as the boys apprehended, but they went into the task with all their might, gobbling and swallowing as if they loved cake, occasionally rolling an eye to the saucer of the contestant to see the relative progress, John strumming, ironically encouraging, and the crowd roaring.  As the combat deepened and the contestants strangled and stuffed and sputtered, the crowd went into spasms of laughter.  The smallest boy won by a few seconds, holding up his empty saucer, with mouth stuffed, vigorously trying to swallow, like a chicken with his throat clogged with dry meal, and utterly unable to speak.  The impartial John praised the victor in mock heroics, but said that the trial was so even that he would divide the prize, ten cents to one and five to the other—­a stroke of justice that greatly increased his popularity.  And then he dismissed the assembly, saying that he had promised the mayor to do so early, because he did not wish to run an opposition to the political meeting going on in the courthouse.