For the decline and fall of negro-minstrelsy it is easy to find more than one sufficient explanation. First of all, it may have been due to its failure to devote itself lovingly to the representation of the many peculiarities of the negro himself. Second, it is possible that negro-minstrelsy had an inherent and inevitable disqualification for enduring popularity, in that it was exclusively masculine and necessarily deprived of the potent attractiveness exerted by the members of the more fascinating sex. And in the third place, its program was rather limited and monotonous, and therefore negro-minstrelsy could not long withstand the competition of the music-hall, of the variety-show, and of the comic musical pieces, which satisfied more amply the exactly similar taste of the public for broad fun commingled with song and dance. Whatever the precise cause may be, there is no denying that negro-minstrelsy is on the verge of extinction, however much we may bewail the fact. It failed to accomplish its true purpose, and it is disappearing, leaving behind it little that is worthy of preservation except a few of its songs. This, at least, it has to its credit--that it gave Stephen Collins Foster the chance to produce his simple melodies. Perhaps we might even venture to assert that the existence of negro-minstrelsy is justified by a single one of these songs--by 'Old Folks at Home,' which has a wailing melancholy and an unaffected pathos, lacking in the earlier and more saccharine 'Home, Sweet Home,' which the English composer, Bishop, based on an old Sicilian tune. After Foster came Root and Work, and 'My Old Kentucky Home' was succeeded by 'Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching,' and by 'Marching thru Georgia'--which last lyric now shares its popularity only with 'Dixie' as a musical relic of the Civil War. It would be pleasant to know whether it was one of Foster's songs, and which one it may have been that once touched the tender heart of Thackeray. "I heard a humorous balladist not long since," the novelist recorded, "a minstrel with wool on his head, and an ultra Ethiopian complexion, who performed a negro ballad that I confess moistened these spectacles in a most unexpected manner. They have gazed at dozens of tragedy-queens dying on the stage and expiring in appropriate blank verse, and I never wanted to wipe them. They have looked up, with deep respect be it said, at many scores of clergymen without being dimmed, and behold! a vagabond with a corked face and a banjo, sings a little song, strikes a wild note, which sets the heart thrilling with happy pity." (1912.) XIV THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW I