players' skins: it all came out negro. Yet they had tried to make
it white; I could perceive how they aimed not at the imitation of
our nature, but at the imitation of our convention; it was like the
play of children in that. I should have said that nothing could be
more false than the motives and emotions of the drama as the author
imagined them, but I had to own that their rendition by these
sincere souls was yet more artificial. There was nothing
traditional, nothing archaic, nothing autochthonic in their poor
art. If the scene could at any moment have resolved myself into a
walk-round, with an interspersion of spirituals, it would have had
the charm of these; it would have consoled and edified; but as it
was I have seldom been so bored. I began to make some sad
reflections, as that our American society, in its endeavour for the
effect of European society, was of no truer ideal than these
coloured comedians, and I accused myself of a final absurdity in
having come there with these young people, who, according to our
good native usage, could have come perfectly well without me. At
the end of the first act I broke into their talk with my conclusion
that we must not count the histrionic talent among the gifts of the
African race just yet. We could concede them music, I supposed, and
there seemed to be hope for them, from what they had some of them
done, in the region of the plastic arts; but apparently the stage
was not for them, and this was all the stranger because they were so
imitative. Perhaps, I said, it was an excess of self-consciousness
which prevented their giving themselves wholly to the art, and I
began to speak of the subjective and the objective, of the real and
the ideal; and whether it was that I became unintelligible as I
became metaphysical, I found Kendricks obviously not following me in
the incoherent replies he gave. Miss Gage had honestly made no
attempt to follow me. He asked, Why, didn't I think it was pretty