An Alabama darky, who prided himself on being able to play any tune on the banjo after he had heard it once, perched himself on the side of a hill one Sunday morning and began to pick the strings in a workman-like manner.
It chanced that the minister came along. Going up to Moses, he demanded harshly, "Moses, do you know the Ten Commandments?"
Moses scratched his chin for a moment, and then, in an equally harsh voice, said:
"Parson, yo' don't think yo' kin beat me do yo'? Jest yo' whistle the first three or four bars, an' I'll have a try at it."—Harper's.
One day Miss Maria Thompson Daviess, the author, walked down a street in Nashville. The street was crowded with Negroes, who were forming in a line for a parade.
"What's the occasion for the parade, Tom?" she asked of a boy.
The boy looked at her with a grin.
"La, Miss Daviess," he replied, "don' you-all know colored folks well 'nough to know dat dey don' need no 'casion foh a p'rade?"