Bryants’ Minstrels

“Did you ever see a nigger show?  If you didn’t you ought to go Wood’s new ball, so neat and pretty, or Bryants’, farther down the city, at either place you’ll laugh your eyes out, to hear the dark who always cries out some funny jest, or touch of wit; oh! We’ve had some high old larks in evenings spent with minstrel darks.  It’s a money making biz, they say, and Wood and Bryants bless the day they made the lucky hit.  After years spent in the battle’s brunt, Neil revels now in a brown stone front, while Wood in response to numerous calls, opens wide his doors in marble halls; and Dan, too, always in the van, lives as big ‘as any other man.’  The season’s biz, we understand, will reach a princely sum—ten thousand dollars each, all made by fun and cutting capers, and—advertising in the papers.”