DIBS PISCATORI^ 543 



" Hard times in Old Virginny, 

 Ole Virginny almost ruined, 

 Ruined by de Nigger Gin'ral. 



" Polly what you got for supper ; 

 Mutton shank and apple dumplins, 

 Good enuf for hi'erd niggas." 



MoBBY. Very dramatic indeed — the last three lines par- 

 ticularly so — but tell me, were Gin'ral Gable and Nat Turner 

 the same or different persons ? 



Nob. Different — Gabriel was the chief of an early and 

 much better-planned insurrection: Nat Turner headed the 

 last outbreak of the negroes in lower Virginia. It is said, 

 that both of them were fellows of great aptitude as leaders, 

 and had they made their escape by an underground railroad 

 and lived to the present time, you and your friends would no 

 doubt have made them captains in the Corps d'Afric[ue. 



Mob. Perhaps if your friend Dick Cooper was alive, since 

 you have such an opinion of his talents, you would use your 

 inflaence to have him appointed leader of a regimental band 

 in the Corps d'Afrique, and introduce the banjo as an instru- 

 ment of martial music. 



Nor. Dick was not a scientific musician, tune and harmony ' 

 with him were intuitive ; to have taught him music from a 

 book would have cramped his genius, and to write his songs 

 on paper would have spoiled them ; as any true and natural 

 negro music will be spoiled by trying to adapt it to the taste 

 of those who generally attend the concerts of what are called 

 "negro minstrels." If you had asked him if he played by 

 note, he would likely have replied, as a black fiddler of 

 celebrity once did at a dance in Kentucky, "No Sir, I plays 

 by de night." — But what have we here ? It fell from one 

 of the pockets of your fly-book, as I was about to replace 



