A performance followed which called forth the appreciation of the crowd more than the wit of Happy John or the faded songs of the yellow girl.John took two sweet-cakes and broke each in fine pieces into a saucer, and after sugaring and eulogizing the dry messes, called for two small darky volunteers from the audience to come up on the platform and devour them.He offered a prize of fifteen cents to the one who should first eat the contents of his dish, not using his hands, and hold up the saucer empty in token of his victory.The cake was tempting, and the fifteen cents irresistible, and a couple of boys in ragged shirts and short trousers and a suspender apiece came up shamefacedly to enter for the prize.Each one grasped his saucer in both hands, and with face over the dish awaited the word "go," which John gave, and started off the contest with a banjo accompaniment.To pick up with the mouth the dry cake and choke it down was not so easy as the boys apprehended, but they went into the task with all their might, gobbling and swallowing as if they loved cake, occasionally rolling an eye to the saucer of the contestant to see the relative progress, John strumming, ironically encouraging, and the crowd roaring.As the combat deepened and the contestants strangled and stuffed and sputtered, the crowd went into spasms of laughter.The smallest boy won by a few seconds, holding up his empty saucer, with mouth stuffed, vigorously trying to swallow, like a chicken with his throat clogged with dry meal, and utterly unable to speak.The impartial John praised the victor in mock heroics, but said that the trial was so even that he would divide the prize, ten cents to one and five to the other--a stroke of justice that greatly increased his popularity.And then he dismissed the assembly, saying that he had promised the mayor to do so early, because he did not wish to run an opposition to the political meeting going on in the courthouse.
The scene in the large court-room was less animated than that out-doors; a half-dozen tallow dips, hung on the wall in sconces and stuck on the judge's long desk, feebly illuminated the mixed crowd of black and white who sat in, and on the backs of, the benches, and cast only a fitful light upon the orator, who paced back and forth and pounded the rail.It was to have been a joint discussion between the two presidential electors running in that district, but, the Republican being absent, his place was taken by a young man of the town.The Democratic orator took advantage of the absence of his opponent to describe the discussion of the night before, and to give a portrait of his adversary.He was represented as a cross between a baboon and a jackass, who would be a natural curiosity for Barnum.
"I intend," said the orator," to put him in a cage and exhibit him about the deestrict." This political hit called forth great applause.All his arguments were of this pointed character, and they appeared to be unanswerable.The orator appeared to prove that there wasn't a respectable man in the opposite party who wasn't an office-holder, nor a white man of any kind in it who was not an office-holder.If there were any issues or principles in the canvass, he paid his audience the compliment of knowing all about them, for he never alluded to any.In another state of society, such a speech of personalities might have led to subsequent shootings, but no doubt his adversary would pay him in the same coin when next they met, and the exhibition seemed to be regarded down here as satisfactory and enlightened political canvassing for votes.The speaker who replied, opened his address with a noble tribute to woman (as the first speaker had ended his), directed to a dozen of that sex who sat in the gloom of a corner.The young man was moderate in his sarcasm, and attempted to speak of national issues, but the crowd had small relish for that sort of thing.At eleven o'clock, when we got away from the unsavory room (more than half the candles had gone out), the orator was making slow headway against the refished blackguardism of the evening.The german was still "on" at the hotel when we ascended to our chamber, satisfied that Asheville was a lively town.
