the banjo,
in a short time, were added the bones. The art had now outgrown its
infancy, and, disdaining a subordinate existence, boldly seceded from
the society of harlequin and the tumblers, and met the world as an
independent institution. Singers organized themselves into quartet
bands; added a fiddle and tambourine to their instruments--perhaps we
should say implements--of music; introduced the hoe-down and the
conundrum to fill up the intervals of performance; rented halls, and,
peregrinating from city to city and from town to town, went on and
prospered.

One of the earliest companies of this sort was organized and sustained
under the leadership of Nelson Kneass, who, while skilful in his
manipulations of the banjo, was quite an accomplished pianist besides,
as well as a favorite ballad-singer. He had some pretensions as a
composer, but has left his name identified with no work of any interest.
His company met with such success in Pittsburg, that its visits were
repeated from season to season, until about the year 1845, when Mr.
Murphy, the leading caricaturist, determining to resume the business in
private life which he had laid aside on going upon the stage, the
company was disbanded.

Up to this period, if negro minstrelsy had made some progress, it was
not marked by much improvement. Its charm lay essentially in its
simplicity, and to give it full development, retaining unimpaired
meanwhile such original excellences as Nature in Sambo shapes and
inspires, was the task of the time. But the task fell into bungling
hands. The intuitive utterance of the art was misapprehended or
perverted altogether. Its naive misconceits were construed into coarse
blunders; its pleasing incongruities were resolved into meaningless
jargon. Gibberish became the staple of its composition. Slang phrases
and crude jests, all odds and ends of vulgar sentiment, without regard
to the idiosyncrasies of the negro, were caught up, jumbled together
into rhyme, and, rendered into the lingo presumed to be genuine, were
ready for the stage. The wit of the performance was made to consist in
quibble and equivoke, and in the misuse of language, after the fashion,
but without the refinement, of Mrs. Partington. The character of the
music underwent a change. Original airs were composed from time to time,
but the songs were more generally adaptations of tunes in vogue among
Hard-Shell Baptists in Tennessee and at Methodist camp-meetings in
Kentuck