Twenty years ago the Negro performer probably had little anticipation of advancing beyond minstrel work, in which he sang loud, danced hard, and told a funny story. S. H. Dudley, the leading comedian in the "Smart Set" colored company, said in 1909: "When I started in business I had no idea of getting as high as I am now. A minstrel company came to the little town in Texas where I was raised, and at once my ambition fired me to become a musician. So I bought a battered horn and began to toot, to the great annoyance of my neighbors. Then I secured an engagement with a minstrel company whose cornet player had fallen into the hands of the law; and now here I am with one of the best colored shows ever gotten together and a starring tour arranged for next season." The movement from the minstrel show to the musical comedy, from the cheapest form of buffoonery to attractive farce, and even to good comedy, has been accomplished by a number of colored comedians. Williams and Walker may be considered the pioneers in this movement, and the story of their success, as Walker has told it, is a fine example of what the Negro can do along the line of decided natural aptitude. And it is important to notice this, for today, in the education of the race, æsthetic instincts are often suppressed with Puritan vigor, and labor is made ugly and unwelcome. Bert Williams and George Walker, one a British West Indian, the other a Westerner, met in California where each was hanging around a box manager's office, looking for a job. Hardly more than boys, they secured employment at seven dollars a week. That was in 1889. In 1908 they made each $250 a week, and in later times they have doubled and quadrupled this. Their first stage manager expected them to perform as the blacked-up white minstrels were performing, but the two boys soon saw that the Negro himself was far more entertaining than the buffoon portrayed by the white man. They wanted to show the true Negro, and billing themselves as the "real coons" (their white rivals called themselves "coons") they played in San Francisco with some success. Later they came to New York, and at Koster and Bial's made their first hit. "Long before our run terminated," Walker said in telling of those early days, "we discovered an important fact: that the hope of the colored performer must be in making a radical departure from the old time 'darky' style of singing and dancing. So we set ourselves the task of thinking along new lines. "The first move was to hire a flat in Fifty-third Street, furnish it, and throw our doors open to all colored men who possessed theatrical and musical ability and ambition. The Williams and Walker flat soon became the headquarters of all the artistic young men of our race who were stage-struck. We entertained the late Paul Lawrence Dunbar, who wrote lyrics for us. By having these men about us we had the opportunity to study the musical and theatrical ability of the most talented members of our race."