 Chapter 1 of J. Poindexter Colored This is a LibreBox recording. All LibreBox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreBox.org. J. Poindexter Colored by Irvin S. Cobb Chapter 1 Down Yonder My name is J. Poindexter. But the full name is Jefferson Exodus Poindexter Colored, but most always in general I has been known as Jeff for short. The Jefferson part is for a white family, which my folks worked for them one time before I was born, and the Exodus is because my mammy craved I should be named after somebody out of the Bible. How I come to write this is this way. It seems like my experiences here in New York is liable to be such that one of my white gentlemen friends, he says to me I should take pen in hand, and write them out just the way they happen, and at the time they is happening, or write soon afterwards, whilst the memory of them is clear in my brain. And then he'll see if he can't get them printed somewheres, which on top of the other things which I now is, will make me an author with money coming in steady. He says to me he will fix up the spelling wherever needed, and attend to the punctuating. But all the rest of it will be my own just like I puts it down. I reads and writes very well, but some way I never learned to puncture. So the places where it is necessary to be punctual in order to make good sense and keep everything regulation and make the talk sound natural is his doings, and also some of the spelling. But everything else is mine, and I ask's credit. My coming to New York in the first place is sort of a sudden thing, which starts here about a month before the present time. I has been working for Judge Priest for going on sixteen years, and is expecting to go on working for him as long as we can get along together all right, which it seems like from appearances that ought to be always. But after he gives up being circuit judge on account of him getting along so in age, he gets sort of fretful by reasons of him not having much to do any more, and most of his own friends having died off on him. When the state begins going Republican about once in so often, he says to me, kind of half joking, he's a great mind to pull up stakes and move off and go live somewhere else. But pretty soon after that the whole country goes dry, and then he says to me, there just naturally ain't no fit in place left for him to go to without he leaves the United States. The old boss man, he broods a right smart over this going dry business. Being a judge and all, he's always been a great hand for upholding the law, but this here is one law which he cannot uphold and yet go on taking of his sweetening drams, steady the same as he's been used to doing all his life. And from the statements which he lets fall from time to time, I gleanse that he can't hardly make up his mind which one of the two of them, law or liquor, he's going to favour the most when the pinch comes and the supply in the diner room cupboard begins running low. Every time he starts off for a little trip somewheres and has to tote a bottle along in his hip pocket, instead of being able to walk into a grocery and refresh himself over the bar, like he's been doing for mighty nigh sixty years, I hear him speaking mumbling words to himself. Footnote. Note by Jeff's Emanuensis. In the part of the union from which Jeff hails and among his race the word mumbling denotes complaint, peevishness, a quarrelous utterance. End of footnote. I hear some saying it's come to a pretty pass when a Kentucky gentleman has either got to compromise with his conscience or play a low down trick on his appetite. Off and on it certainly does pester him mightily. But just about the middle of the present summer he gets a letter from his married niece, her which used to be Miss Sally Fanny Priest, but is now married to a Yankee gentleman named Fairchild and living in Denver, Colorado. Miss Sally Fanny is the closest kin folks the old judge has got left in the world, and she ups and writes to him and invites him to come on out there where she lives and stay a spell with them, and then toward winter go along with her to a place called Bermuda, which it seems like from what she says in the letter Bermuda is one of these here localities where you can still keep on having a toddy when you feels like it without breaking the law. So he studies about it awhile, and then he says to me one night he believes he'll go, which he does along about four weeks ago, leaving me behind to sort of look out for the home place out on Clay Street. My wages goes on the same as if he was there, and I has but little to do, but the place seems mighty lonesome to me without the old boss man pottering round doing this and that and the other thing. I certainly does miss seeing the sight of him. Every time I walks through the front part of the house, and it all empty and closed up and smelling kind of mustard, and sees his old umbrella hanging on the front hall hat rack where he forgot and left it there the day he went away, I get so sort of a low feeling in my mind. It's like having the toothache in a place where there ain't no tooth to have it in. And I keeps on thinking about the old days when he'd be setting out on the front porch as night time come on, with some of them old time friends of his dropping in on him, and me bringing them drinks from the sideboard, and them laughing and smoking and joking and carrying on. Or else may be talking about the Confederate war and the battle of Shiloh and all. But most of them is dead and gone, and the old judge is a way out yonder in Denver, Colorado, a many and a many a mile from me, and all I can hear as I comes up the walk from the front gate after dark is the Katie Dids calling in the silver leaf trees, and all I can hear when I unlocks the door and goes inside is one of them old chimney swifts up the chimney going whoosh whoosh whoosh. I've never took notice before now that an empty house which it has always been empty ain't half so lonesome for you to be in it as one which has been lived in by people you knowed, but they have now gone entirely away. So after about two weeks of being alone I get so restless I feels like I can't stand it very much longer without breaking loose some way. So one Sunday about half past two o'clock in the evening I'm going on past a young white gentleman by the name of Mr. Dallas Pulliam's house, and he comes out on his front porch and calls over to me and tells me to come on in there because he wants to talk to me about something. So I crosses over from the other side of the street and walks up to the porch steps and takes off my hat and asks him how is he getting along, and he says he ain't got no complaint, and he asks me how is I getting along my own self, and I tells him just sort of tolerable so and so, and then he says to me how would I like to take a trip to New York City. I thinks he must be funny, but I says to him, I says, how come New York City, Mr. Dallas? So he tells me that here lately he's been studying a right smart about going to New York and staying there a spell on a sort of a vacation like, and if he likes it maybe he'll settle there and go into business. He says he's about made up his mind to take some likely black boy along with him for to be his body servant and look after his clothes and things and everything. And he's thinking that maybe I might be the one to fill the bill, and then he says to me how about it, Jeff, want to go along and give the big town the wants over or not. I then sees he is not funny, but is making me a straight business proposition. I thanks him and says to him that I has ever had the crave to travel far and wide, and that I likewise has often heard New York spoke of as a very pleasant place to go to by them which has done so, and also a place where something or other is going on most of the time. But I says to him I'm afraid I can't go on account I'm under obligations to Judge Priest by reason of us having been together so long, and him having left me in complete utter charge of our house. He says, though, he thinks maybe he can attend to that part of it all right. He says he'll write a letter to the Judge specifying about what's come up, and he's pretty sure it can be fixed up so as I can go. He says if I don't like the job after I gets there he'll pay my way back home again any time I wants to come, or when the old Judge needs me, either one. He says he ain't adopting me, he's just borrowing me. I always has liked Mr. Dallas Pooleum, him being one of the most free-handed young white gentlemen in town. Of course, off and on, I've heard the rest of the white folks harrying him behind his back about the way he's handled all that their money which was left to him here a few years back when his paw died. There was that time when he bought a sugar plantation down in Louisiana, sight unseen, and when he went down to see it, couldn't do so without he'd done a whole heap of bailing out first. By reason of its being under three feet of standing water. Anyway, that's what I heard tell, though I reckon it wasn't no ways as bad as what some of the white folks led on. And there was that other time only a few months back when he decided to start up a buggy factory. I overhears Judge Priest speaking about that one day to Dr. Lake. That young man, Dallas Pooleum, certainly is a sagacious and a far-seeing person, he says. Just when automobiles has got so cheap that every hillbilly in the county can afford to own at least one, he's fixin' to go into the buggy factory business on an extensive scale. Next time I run into him, I'm going to suggest to him that when the buggy trade seems to sort of slack up, as possibly it may, that instead of layin' off his hands he might start in to turnin' out flintlocked muskets for the U.S. Army. I suspicions that Judge Priest or somebody else must have spoke to Mr. Dallas along those lines, because he didn't go into the buggy business after all. For the past several months he ain't been doing much of anything so far as I know's of, except pranking round and courting Miss Henrietta Farrell. Well, white folks may poke their fun at him unbeknownst, but he's got manners suitable to make him popular with me. He's the kind of a white gentleman that's this here way. He'll wear a new necktie or a fancy vest about three or four times, and then he'll get tired of it and pass it on to the first one which comes along. Moreover, him and me is mighty near the same size, and I know's full well in advance, just from looking at him that Sunday evening, standing there on his porch, that the very same suit of clothes which he's got on then will fit me without practically no alterations. It's a checked suit, too, and mighty catchy to the eye. So right off I tells him if Judge Priest gives his free will and consent, I'll certainly be down at the depot when that their old engine whistle blows for to get aboard for New York City. Which he then asks me for Miss Sally Fanny's address and promises he'll write out there that very night to find out can I go. It's curious how News does travel round in a place that's the right size for everybody in it to know everybody else's business. Before night it has done leaked out somehow that I is seriously considering accepting going to New York with young Mr. Dallas Pulliam, and by next morning, lo and behold, if it ain't all over town. Wherever I goes, pretty near everybody I meets, whites and blacks alike, asks me how about it, and allows I'm powerful lucky to get such a chance. Mostly in times gone by, when my race goes north they heads for Chicago, Illinois, or maybe Detroit, Michigan, or Indianapolis, Indiana. No sooner do they get there than they begins writing back saying that up north is the only fit in place for colored folks to be at. Wages high, time easy, and white folks calling you Mr. and everything pleasant like that. They writes that there is not no Jim Crow cars nor separate seats for colored at the moving pictures nor nothing like that. But I has taken notice that after a while most of them quits writing back and starts coming back. Some stays, but more returns, and is verging on shouting happy when they crosses the Ohio River coming in. From what I hears some of them say after they gets home and has got a full meal of vitals inside of them, and so has got more time to talk. I has made up my mind that so far as my own color is concerned the main difference from the south is this. Up north they calls you Mr. but they don't feed you. Still New York City ain't Chicago, Illinois, nor yet it ain't Detroit, Michigan. And besides working for Mr. Dallas Pooleum I won't have to be worrying about when does I eat next. Still even so I says to myself that it won't be no harm to inquire around now that the word is done leaked out anyhow and learn something more than what little I knows about New York City. But it seems like outside of some few white folks there is not nobody I knows who's ever been there, excusing a few head of draft boys which went there enduring of the early part of the war. And they wouldn't scarcely count neither on account of them just passing through, and not staying over only just a short time whilst waiting for the boat to start. How some ever they tells me one and all that from what they did see of it they is willing to recommend it very highly. One or two of the white gentlemen which I is well acquainted with they tells me the same too. Mr. Jerry Fairley he takes me into his law office when I meets him on the street and speaks to him about it. And he gets a book all about New York down off of one of his shelves and he reads to me where the book says that in New York there is more of these here Germans than there is in any German city except one. And more Russians than there is in any Russia city except none. And more Italians than there is in any Italy city except one. And more Hungarians than there is in any Hungary city at all. And so on and so forth. I says to him I says Mr. Jerry it seems lack they is moe of ever nation in New York and what they is anywars else. But they does not fear to be nothing said about Americans. How come sir? He says he reckons there's so few of them there that the man which wrote the book didn't figure it was worthwhile putting them in. Still he says I'll probably run into somebody wants in a while which speaks the United States language. Most every policeman does he says I understand it's the law that they have to be able to speak it before they'll let them go on the force so as they can understand the foreigners that come over from the mainland of North America to visit in New York. The way he looks so sort of serious when he says that I can't tell if he's in earnest or not. I judges though that he's just having his thumb diddles with me. And then he goes on and tells me that the biggest of everything and the tallest and the richest and the grandest is found there. And if I don't believe it is I can just ask any New Yorker after I gets there and he'll tell me the same. So taking one thing with another I might be much pleased when the word comes along in about a week from then that the old judge says I can go and sends me his best wishes and a twenty dollar bill as a parting gift and friendship offering. He says in the letter which Mr. Dallas reads to me to tell me to be sort of careful about sampling the stock of liquor and cigars on the sideboard of any New York family when I'm in their house and also not to start in wearing a strange Yankee gentleman's clothes without telling him about it first. He says people up there probably don't understand local customs as they have ever prevailed down our way. And if I ain't careful first thing I know there'll be a skinny black nigger named Jeff locked up in the county jail hollowing for help and not no help handy. But that's just the old boss man's joke. He always is been the beatenest one for tweeting me about little things around the house. Mr. Dallas he knows how to take what the judge says and so does I and we has quite a laugh together over the letter. And less than twenty four hours from that time we is both all packed up and on our way New York bound. Me wearing one of Mr. Dallas suits of clothes which I figures he ain't had it on his back more than five or six times before altogether. It's a suit of a most pleasing pattern too and cut very stylish with a belt in the back. End of chapter one. Chapter two of J Point Dexter Colored by Irvin S. Cobb. The sleeper box recording is in the public domain. Northbound. Next morning after we gets across into Ohio Mr. Dallas he fetches me into the Pullman car where he's riding. I finds myself more comfortable there than I has been riding up front in the colored compartment but lesser easy in my mind. I enjoys the feel of them soft seats and yet I gets sort of uneasy setting amongst so many strange white folks. Still there ain't nobody telling me to roust myself out from there and after a while I gets more used to being where I now is. Also I get acquainted with two of the porters, the one on our car and the one on the car which is hitched on next to us. When they ain't busy we all free gets out in the little porches betwixt the cars and confabs together. Of course I don't let on to them but all the time I studies them two boys. The one on our car which is given name is Roscoe is short and chunky and kind of fatted out. He's black as the pots and powerful nappy headed besides. His head looks like somebody has done dipped it in a kettle of grease and then throw a handful of buckshot at it and they all stuck. But he's smart. He knows what's service. I seize that plane. With Roscoe it's this way. A lady gets on board the car. No sooner does she sit down and begin to fumble with the hat pins than there's old Roscoe standing right alongside of her holding a big paper bag in his hands. All opened out for her to put her hat in it and keep it out of the dust. A gentleman setting in the smoking room reaches in his pocket and gets a cigar out. Before he rightly can bite the end of it off here is this here same Roscoe at his elbow with a match ready. Roscoe he ain't hanging back waiting for folks to ask him for something and then have them getting all threatful whilst he's running to find whatever tits they want. No sir not him. He's there with the materials almost before they has made up their minds what it is they craves next. He just naturally beats them to it which I'll tell the world that's service. He's powerful crafty about his tips too. When he does something for a passenger and the passenger reaches in his pocket to get a little piece of chicken feet out to hand over to Roscoe. He smiles and holds up his hand. No sir he says to him keep your funds while they now is please sir. There ain't no hurry we're going travel quite a piece together. When we gets to where you gets off if you is perfectly satisfied with all what has been done in your behalf then you can slip me a little reward if you be mine too. He tells me in confidences that working it that way he gets dollars where he would have got dimes. He calls it his deferred payment plan. He says some months his tips run three times what his wages is. I'll say that old tar baby certainly has got something in his head besides sockets for his teeth to set in. The other porter the one which is on the car next behind is as different from Roscoe as day is from night. He calls himself Harold but I knows just from looking at him that he's too old for such a fancy entitlement as that. Because Harold is a new issue name amongst us colored and this here boy must be rising of forty years old if he's a day. This Harold is yellow-complected and yet he ain't the pure high yellow neither. He's more the shade of a slice of scorched sponge cake. He's plenty up a ditty and I takes notice that the further north the train goes the more a pity he gets. He quits saying no ma'am and yes sir almost before we leaves Cincinnati. He quits saying thank you sir and he starts saying I thank you in such a way it sounds like he was actually doing you a favor to accept your two bits. He starts talking back to passengers which complains about something. He acts more and more begrudgeful until it looks like it must actually hurt him to step along and do something which somebody on the train wants done. Along about Pittsburgh he's got so brash that I keeps watching for some white man to rise up and knock that boy's mouth so far round from the middle of his face it'll look like his side entrance. But nothing like that don't happen and I is most deeply surprised and marvels greatly. I says to myself I says Harold I says I aims to get your likeness well fixed in my mind because I got a presentiment at you ain't going to be round here so very much longer and I wants to be able to remember how you looked after you was gone from us. Some of these times you is going to get your system mixed and start being bigotty on your way south and then you is due to wake up at the end of your run all organized to attend your own funeral. Yes sir, man, when you comes in to New Orleans you'll have been dead fully twelve hours. I can just shut my eyes right now and see the cemetery sexton patting you in the face with a spade. I talks to him about the way he acts. Of course I does not come right out and ask him about it but I leads him up to it gentle and round about. He tells me he don't aim to let nobody run over him. He tells me he considers himself just as good as they is, if not better. He says he lives in a place called Jersey City where the colored race gets their bound and rights and if they don't get them they often contends for them until they do. I says to him I says, Harold I says, I ain't never been about no wars much till this present trip and I ain't never seen much so you must excuse of my ignorance but the way it looks to me I'd rather be happy amongst niggers than miserable amongst white folks. He says to me ain't I got no respect for my color. I says to him I's got so much respect for it that I ain't aiming to jam myself into places where I ain't desired. He says that ain't a point. He says the point is that I has got to stand up for the entitled rights and privileges of the colored race. I says where I comes from I also has got to think about keeping from getting my head all peeled. He says to me I'll find out before I has been long up north that there is a sight of difference betwixt Kentucky and New Jersey. I says to him that most doubtless he is right and then he says I should also be careful about speaking the word nigger. He says the word ain't never used no more amongst colored folks which respects themselves. I says to him I says ha I says well then what does you call a boy when use blab and long with him friendly lack. He says it is different when I is strictly amongst my own color but that I mustn't never speak the word nigger in front of white folks nor never allow no white man to call me that and get away with it. I says not even if you is walking for him and he don't call it to you to hurt your feelings nor to demean you but just says it sociable and so and so. He says not under no circumstances whatsoever. I says how is I go and stop him. He says with your fists or half of a loose brick or something. I says to Harold Harold I says you sure was right just now when you nor aided at they was a difference betwixt Kentucky and up north. Well live and learn I says live and learn only if I aims to learn from you I has doubts whether I'll live so very much longer. We talk some more about making money too. It seems like the closer you gets to New York City the more you thinks about money. I noticed it then and I notices it since frequent. He says to me that some of the boys in the sleeping car portering business don't depend just on their wages and their tips alone. He says they has another way for to pick up loose change. He says he don't follow after it himself. He has got one or two other boys in mind which he has talked with them and knows how they does it. I says to him I says specify. He says the way these year boys gets the money is that they gets it late at night after everybody has done went to Bade. Most generally a man at traveling he don't keep track of his loose change. Anyhow he don't keep near as close track of it as he do when he's home. He's buying his self a cigar year and a paperback book there and an apple in this place and a sandwich in at place and he just stick the change in his pants pocket and goes on about his business. Well come Bade time he turns in. We'll say you is the porter on his car. You goes through the car till you comes to his birth. You parts the curtains just as easy as you can and you peeps in though the crack and see if he's sleeping good. If his pants is all folded up smooth you better ramble along and leave at man B. Folded pants is most generally a sign of a careful man which the chances is he knows how much he's got to assent. But if his pants is kind of wadded up in the little hammock or flung to one side sort of tearless lack he reaches in and you lifts him out. But first you wants to be sure he's sleeping sound. Then which sleeps on the back with the mouth open is the safest. I says to him I says yes but suppose and he do wake up and catch you fumbling round in sides of his birth. What then? Oh he says the vassal provided for in the ritual. You says to him excuse me mister I met a mistake. I thought you was the gentleman had left the early call for to get off at Harrisburg. But most in general he don't wake up. So you gets his pants out into the aisle and goes through them. If he's got some arse round five dollars in loose change in his pockets you text fifty cents no mo and no less and then you slips his pants back where you found them and go long. If he's got some arse round ten dollars in chicken feed and in ones and twos you assesses him dues of just one dollar even. If you plays your system right and don't get greedy they ain't one chance to the thousand at he'll miss the money when he wakes up. But he says there's one fatal exception to the rule. When you come to him don't touch a cent of his money no matter how much he's carrying on him. Because if you do he's sure to mecca hollow the very first thing in the morning and next thing you know you's in trouble and they's beckoning you up on the carpet. I says to him I says wait a minute I says let me see if I can't name you the exception my own Seth. The exception I says is the white man which he carries all his small change in one of these year little screwed up leather purses. Need it and he says yes for a fact that so but he says how come I is knowing so much when I ain't never done no portering my own self. And I says to him a man don't need to be wearing railroading clothes to know that any white man which totes around one of them little tight patent purses knows at all times sleeping or waking just exactly how much money he's got. Well when we gets to New York City it's morning again. When we comes out of the depot into the street I takes one look round and I allows to myself that these here New York folks certainly has got powerfully behind some way with their hauling. Excuseing the time we had the cyclone down home I ain't never in my whole life seen so much truck and stuff and things moving in all different directions at the same time. And people will we every which way I looks all I can see is a multitude of strangers. And I says to myself there certainly must be a big convention going on in this town for the streets to be so full of visiting delegates and it's a mighty good thing for us. Mr. Dallas is done sent a telegram on ahead for rooms at the hotel. Else we'd have to camp out with some private family same as they does down home in County Fairweek or when the District Methodist Conference meets. The white gentleman that's going to fix up what I writes he told me that I should set down my first impressions of New York before I begins to forget them. He says they'll make good local color whatever that is which I will now do so. The thing which impresses me first and foremost is a steamboat I sees on the river which runs alongside New York City on the side nearest to Paduca. She is not no sidewheeler nor yet she ain't no sternwheeler which all the steamboats I has ever seen before is naturally bound to be one or the other. As near as I can tell she has not got no wheel at all side or stern. It would seem that what runs her is a kind of a big humpback timber which sticks up out of the middle of her hurricane deck and works up and down and which Mr. Dallas tells me is known as a walking beam. But it seems like to me that's certainly a most curious way to run a steamboat and I says to myself that wonders will never cease. And the thing which impresses me next most is a snack stand on a sidewalk where they is selling watermelons by the slice and it the middle of August. And next to that the most impressiveness is when I sees a gang of black fellows working on a levee down by this same river. Only it's mighty flat looking for a levee. These boys is working their roust abouting freight and there ain't a single one of them which is singing as he goes back and forth. When a river nigger down our way don't sing whilst he's loading it's a sign something is wrong with him and next thing he knows he don't know nothing by reason of the mate having lambed him across the head with a hickory gad. But this here gang is going along just as dumb as if they was white. I wonders to myself if thereby they is hoping to fool somebody into believing they is white. I will therefore state that these three things is the things which impresses me the most highly on my first arrival in New York. I also takes notice of the high buildings. They strikes me as being quite high. But of course when you starts in to build a high building. Highness is naturally what you aims for. Ain't it? End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of J. Poindexter Colored by Irvin S. Cobb This Leapervox recording is in the public domain. Manhattan Isle The day we gets to New York is the day before yesterday and we has been on the go so constant ever since and I has seen so much it seems like my ideas is all mixed up together same as a mess of scrambled eggs. The way it looks to me the main is difficulty with an author especially if he's kind of new at the authorizing business is not so much to find something to write up as to pick out the special things which should be wrote up and just leave the rest be. So it is now my aim to set forth the main points which sticks out in my mind. Well first off soon as we gets in we goes to the hotel. Before hand Mr. Dallas he says to me it's a quiet hotel uptown. But when we arrives at it I takes a look around and I says to myself that if this here is a quiet hotel they sure must have to wear ear mufflers at one of the noisy ones if they hopes to hear themselves think. To begin with she don't look like no hotel I've ever been used to. She rears herself a way up in the air same as a church steeple only with windows all the way up. And although the weather is pleasant there is not no white folks setting in chairs under the front gallery. In the first place there is not nothing which looks like a gallery excusing it's a little glass to do which sticks out over the pavement at the main entrance. And if anybody was to try setting there the only way he could save his feet from being mashed off by people trampling on him would be for him to have both legs sawed off at the ankles. You'd think that being uptown the neighborhood would be kind of quiet with shade trees and maybe some vacant lots here and there. But no sir it's all built up solid and the crowds as mighty near as thick as what they was down around the depot and in just as much of a hurry to get to wherever it is they is bound for. Even with all the jamming and all the excitement going on they must have been expecting us. The way they fusses over Mr. Dallas is proof to my mind that somebody must have told him in advance that he belongs to the real quality down where we comes from. And I certainly is puffed up with pride to be along with him because if he had been the king of Europe they could not have showed him no higher honors than what they does. No sooner does we pull up at the curb stone in front than a huge big tall white man dressed up something like a Knights of Templar is opening the taxi-hack door for us to get out. And two or three white boys in militia suits comes a running at his call and snatches the baggage away from me. And another member of the grand lodge in full uniform is standing just inside the front door to give us the low bow of welcome as we walks into a place which it is all done up with marble posts and with red wallpaper on the walls and gold chicken coupes on every side until it puts me in mind of a country nigger's notion of heaven. Over at the clerk's enclosure three white men is waiting very eager to receive us, which each and every one of them is wearing his dress-up clothes with a standing collar and long-tailed coat the same as though he was fixing to be best man at a wedding or pallbearer at a funeral or something else extra special and fancy. For all its summertime there is not nobody loafing round there in his shirt sleeves. I bet you there ain't. One of the pall-bearing gentlemen shoves the book round for Mr. Dallas to write his name in it and the second one he reaches for the keys and the third one he looks to see if there is not some mail or telegrams for him. It takes no less than a number than three of them white boys in the soldier clothes to escort Mr. Dallas upstairs and a fourth one he grabs up my valise and takes me on an elevator to the servants annex. He don't have to run the elevator himself neither. There's another hand just to do that alone and all my white boy has got to do is wrestle my baggage. It's the first time in my life ever I has had a white person toting my belongings for me and it makes me feel kind of aboveish and important. Also I take notice that when he gets to my room he keeps hanging round fussing with the window-shade and first one thing and then another same as if he was one of the bell-boys at the hotel down home waiting on a travelling man. Of course he's lingering round till he gets his tip. For quite a spell I let's him linger on and suffer. I let's on like I don't suspicion what he's hanging about that a way for. Then I slips him two bits and I don't begrudge it to him neither, account of it giving me such a satisfactory feeling to be high toning a white boy. I says to myself that if this here is the annex where they boards the transom help. Footnote. It is believed that Jeff meant transient. End of note. What must the main part of the hotel where the regular guests stay at be like? Because my room certainly is mighty stylish looking and full of general grandeur. But I ain't got no time to be staying there and enjoying the furniture because I knows Mr. Dallas will be needing me for to come and wait on him. So I starts right out to find him and it seems like I travels half a mile through them hallways before I does so. He's got a big setting room all to himself and a fashionable bedroom and a special bath and a little special hall and all. I says to him I says Mr. Dallas they sure must be monstrous set up over having you pick out the hotel for us to stop at. Look how the reception committee turned out for you downstairs in full regalia. Look how they mounting I broke the next for to usher you in in due state. And now if they ain't done gone and sign you to the bridal chamber and give you the upstairs parlor for your own use mow over. It pintedly indicates to me at they sets a heap of store by you. He sort of laughs at that. Why Jeff he says if you think this is a fine layout you should see some of the other sweets they have here. I says I ain't craven to see him. I've done seen sweetness not as tis they suddenly is using us noble. He says they should ought to use us noble seeing what the prices they charges us. He says do you know what I'm paying here for the accommodations for the two of us. I'm paying twenty seven dollars and a half. I says to him if that's the case he better let me clear out of their right brisk and skirmish round and find me a respectable colored boarding house somewhere's handy by so as to cut down the expenses. Because I don't care what anybody says twenty seven dollars and a half is a sight of money to be paying out every week. He says twenty seven and a half a week. Remember Jeff we are in New York now where everything runs high. This stands me twenty seven and a half a day. I says to him I says wooly. Wooly I says no wonder they can provide fancy garments for all the hands and buy solid gold bars for the cage where they keeps them clerks penned up. Mr. Dallas I says it sure is behoove on us to eat hardy three times a day in order for to get our money's worth whilst we's boredom year. He says though for me not to over tax my appetite just on that account because the eating is besides. He says we pays twenty seven dollars and a half a day just for our rooms. I says to him I says Mr. Dallas let's get out of here before they begins charging us up for the air we breathe. He says you're too late with your suggestion. They do charge us for that. The air is all cleaned and cooled before it comes into these rooms. Then I knows for sure he is burlesking me. Who's going to hold the air whilst they cleans it? And the good Lord himself can't chill air to order in the middle of a August hutspell let alone a lot of folks running a hotel. Can he? I asks Mr. Dallas them questions. He slaps and says to me that there's not no need to worry because he won't be staying there only just a day or so. He says Mr. H.C. Rainer which is his principalist friend in New York and the one which he's thinking about maybe going into business with has done devised for us to hire some ready furnished quarters still higher up town. He says something about him being sublet quarters in a department house. Least wise that's what I makes out of what he says. That's news to me in more ways than one because in the first place I didn't know any of the sublets which is a very plentiful white connection in our county had done moved up here to live. And in the second place it seemed like to me there just naturally couldn't be no more uptown to New York City than what I already had done observed coming from the train. He goes on to say he is expecting to hear from the gentleman almost any minute now and then he'll know better what the program is. Almost before he gets the words out of his mouth the telephone bell rings and sure enough it is this here Mr. Rainer which is on the wire. And it turns out that the place where we're going is ready for us now on account of the folks which owns it having gone away sooner than what they expected. And the further tidings is that we can move up there that same day which we does along about an hour before supper time. I notice as they don't make near as much fuss over us going vents from there as they did whilst ushering us in. I judges the man what owns the hotel must be feeling kind of put out about losing of all that their money which we'd be paying him had we stayed on. We gets into a taxi-hack and we rides for what seems like to me it's several miles and still are not no where near the outskirts as far as I can judge. And when finally we gets to the new location I has another astonishment for here all day I've been expecting we'd land at a private residence but this place to which we've come at don't look like no private residence to me. It's more like the hotel we just left only more bigger and mighty near as tall. In all other respects additional it certainly is a grand establishment. It's got a kind of a private road so carriages can drive in under shelter off the sidewalk. And way back inside is a round piece of ground all fixed up with solid marble benches and little cedar trees and flower beds like a cemetery. I thinks to myself that maybe this here is the private burying plot for the owner's family. But still there ain't no tombstones in sight excepting one over the front door with words cut on it and since I figures I has done showed ignorance enough for one day I don't ask no full questions about it. The help here also wears fancy clothes but is my own color. I'm glad of that because I counts now on having some black folks to get acquainted with and to talk to. But just as soon as one of them opens his mouth and speaks I knows they is not my kind even if they is my complexion because he don't talk like no white folks ever I know and yet he don't talk like none of the black folks does at home. Still just from his conversation I can place him. There was two just like him which was brought along once by the northern family staying in our town but they didn't linger long amongst us. They didn't like the place and no more the place didn't like them. They claimed they was genuine West Indians whatever that is and they made their brags constant that they was also British subjects but Aunt Dilsie Turner she always said they looked more like objects to her. Aunt Dilsie which she was Judge Priest's cook for going on twenty years is mighty plain spoken about folks and things which she don't fancy. And she did not fancy these two none whatsoever. When we gets upstairs to our section I'm sort of disappointed in it. The furniture ain't new and shiny like what I naturally expected it would be. Most of it is kind of old and dingy and hacked up looking. The curtains at the setting room windows is all frayed like and mighty near war through in spots. And the sublet family must run out of money before they got round to buying carpets because they is not no carpets at all but only a parcel of old faded rugs scattered about the floor here and there. Some of the chairs the best company chairs too is so old they is actually decrepit. I'd say that by rights they belonged in a second hand store or least ways up in the attic. Moreover they ain't no upstairs to our department nor yet there is not no downstairs nor no cellar. But instead everything kitchen pantry and rooms for the help and all runs on one floor. But Mr. Dallas he deports himself like he is satisfied and it ain't for me to be finding fault if he sees fit not to find any. Anyway I is so busy for a little while flying round and getting things unpacked that I has no time to utter complaints. Pretty soon though I has to knock off hanging up Mr. Dallas suits to mix a batch of cocktails from the private stock he has brought along with him in one of his trunks. Because this here Mr. Rainer he telephones he's bringing some of his friends for a round of drinks with Mr. Dallas and then Mr. Rainer says they'll ride out in his motor car to a road house to get him some dinner. I takes his message off the telephone and I knows that's what he says, surprising though it do sound. That's a couple of new ones on me eating dinner when it's already mighty near past supper time and eating it at a road house too. I says to myself that New York City is getting to act more curiouser to me every minute I stays in it. Because the only road house ever I knowed of by that name used to stand alongside the toll gate just outside the corporation limits on the Mayfield Road. And the old white man which collected the tolls lived in it, his name being Mr. Jip Bayless. But the gate is done torn down since the public government taken over the gravel roads and anyhow even in its most palmiest days none of the quality wouldn't never think of stopping there at that little old rusty house for their vitals. They'd mighty near as soon think of having a picnic at the pest house. Still and notwithstanding Mr. Dallas ain't indicating no surprise when I conveys to him what Mr. Rainer says. So I reflects to myself that if toll gate houses up here is in proportion to everything else, this one which they're aiming to go to must probably be about the size of a county courthouse with a slate roof on it and doubtless a cubula. So I just gets busy and mingles up a batch of powerful tasty cocktails in the shaker. I knows they is tasty from a couple of private samples which I pours off for myself out in the pantry. My experience has been that the only way you can tell is a cocktail just right is to taste it from time to time as you goes along. Immediately soon here comes Mr. Rainer with his friends which there is four of them besides himself, one other gentleman named Bellows and three ladies. One of the ladies is older than the other two but decorated more younger if anything than what they is. Introducing her to Mr. Dallas Mr. Rainer says her name is Mrs. Gaylord but they all calls her Jerry. She's pretty nearly entirely out of eyebrows but she has got more than a bushel of hair which is all kind of frozen looking and curled up tight on her head. It don't look natural to me and I knows it ain't natural a little bit later when Mr. Rainer sets down on the arm of her chair and froze his arm around her sort of off hand and sociable like. And she often tells him for heaven's sake to be careful and not musser up because she says she's only just that day spent forty dollars and four hours getting a permanent way you put in. At that I says to myself I says well betwixt whites and blacks we suddenly is mech in the world safe for them beauty doctors. Niggers down south spend in all the money they can rake and scrape together getting the kinkiness tuck out of their haids and fashionable ladies up year spend in therein getting it put in. It's a compliment to one race or the other but just which I ain't prepared to say. The other ladies is named Miss O'Brien and Miss DeWitt but it's kind of hard for me at first to remember which from which seeing that the rest of the party scarcely ever calls them anything except Pat and Billy. They is both mighty nice and friendly but they is exclusively different one from the other. Miss Pat she's got her hair chopped off short like a little boy's and she acts kind of like a boy does too. Free and easy and laughing a lot and smoking a cigarette so natural that it's like as if she must have been born with one in her mouth and it lighted. And yet for all that I seems to get the impression that way down underneath she's kind of tired of herself and everything around her. But this here miss DeWitt she is tall and slender and kind of quiet. She must have been feeling poorly lately because her face is just dead white and her lips is still bright red from the fever. And when she sets down in a chair she just seems to kind of fall back into it all limp like. She ain't saying much with her mouth but she does a sight of talking with her eyes which is big and black and sort of lazy like most of the time. She sure is decked up with jewelry like the Queen of Sheba too. She's got big heavy necklaces round her neck and great long earrings in her ears and many bracelets on both her arms. She's even got two big bracelets clamped round one of her ankles which I judges she didn't have room for them nowhere else and so put them there to keep from losing them. And when she moves the jewelry all jingles freely and advertises her. She walks with a kind of a limber swimming-gate soft and glideful. Of course it ain't exactly like swimming and yet that's the only way I can designate what her walking puts me in mind of. She wears dead black clothes and that makes her paleness seem all the more so. Right from the first jump I can see that Mr. Dallas is drawn to her powerful. And I think to myself that if he's fixing to favour this here languid lady with his attentions it proves he's got a changeable taste because she ain't nothing at all similar to Miss Henrietta Farrell which she is the one that he's been courting these past few months down in Kentucky. In fact she's most tea totally unsimilar. This Mr. Bellows which came with Mr. Rainer he don't detain my attention much. If he wasn't there you wouldn't scarcely miss him and when he is there you don't scarcely observe him. He makes me think of a neat haircut and nothing else. You just depreciate him being present and that's all. But I studies Mr. Rainer every chance I get, the more especially because he's the one which is more or less responsible for us having come north. He's very cheering in his ways, laughing and whooping out loud at everything and poking fun and telling Mr. Dallas that he must be good friends with Mr. Bellows and the three ladies because they is all four of them his friends. But I takes note that when he laughs he don't laugh with his eyes but only with his mouth and when he sort of smiles to himself quiet like it puts me in mind of a man drawing a knife. I can't keep from having a kind of a feeling when I looks at him. Well, they imbibes up all the cocktails that I has waiting for them and a batch more which I mix by request and then they packs up a couple of bottles, one scotch and one bourbon, to take along with them for to refresh themselves with that the roadhouse and off they puts. And the last thing I hears as it goes down the hall is Mr. Rainer still laughing from off the top of his pallets and the sickly one Mr. Whits necklaces and things all jingling like a road gang. Mr. Dallas he calls back to me from the elevator that I needn't wait up for him because it is liable to be pretty late when he gets in. But it's a good thing I does wait up dozing off and on between times because when he arrives back along about half past three in the morning he certainly does need my assistance getting his clothes off of him. Not since dryness come in as I've seen a young white gentleman more thoroughly overtaken than what he is. And we got a plenty vigorous drinkers down our way too. And always did have. So then I goes to bed myself and that's the end of our first day and the following day which it was yesterday is the day I gets lost which I will tell about that next. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of J. Poindexter Colored by Urban S. Cobb The sleeper box recording is in the public domain. Harlem Heights Well in the morning I arranges a snack of notorious breakfast on a tray and takes it into Mr. Dallas. But he ain't craving nothing solid to eat. He's just craving to lay still and favor his headache. Soon as he opens his eyes he starts in groaning like he's done got far behind with his groaning and is striving for to catch up. And I knows he must have felt powerful good last night to be feeling so bad this morning. Misery may love company as some say it do, but I takes notice that very often she don't arrive till after the company is gone. He tells me to take them vitals out of his sight and fix him up about a gallon of good cold ice water and set it alongside his bed in easy reach. And then I can leave him be where he is and go out for a while and seek amusement looking at the sights and scenes of New York City. But when I gets to the door he calls out to me I better make it two gallons which I knows by that he ain't so far gone but what he can still joke. So I goes on out just strolling along in a general direction looking at this and admiring a bat and there certainly is a heap for to see and for to admire. The houses is so tall it seems like the sky is resting almost on the tops of them and it's mighty near the bluest sky and the clearest ever I seen. It makes you want to get up there and fly round in it. Down below in the street there ain't so very much brightness by reason of the buildings being so high they cuts off the daylight somewhat. It's like walking through a hollow betwixt steep hills. People is stirring around every witch away both on foot and in automobiles and most of the automobiles is all shined up nice and clean like as if the owners was going to take part in an automobile parade in connection with the convention. Everybody is extensively well dressed too but most all is wearing a kind of a brooding look like they had family troubles at home or something else to pester them and they ain't stopping one another when they meet and saying ain't it a lovely morning and passing the time of day like we does down home. Even some of them which comes out of the same house together just goes bulging on without a word to nobody and I remarks to myself that a lot of the neighbors in this district must have had a falling out amongst themselves and quit speaking. The children on the sidewalk ain't playing much together neither either they plays off by themselves or they just walks along with their keepers. And there is almost as many dogs as there is children mostly small fool looking dogs and the dogs is all got keepers too dragging them on chains and jerking them up sharp when they tries to linger and smell round or strange smells and confab with passing dogs. Near as I can make out the dogs here ain't allowed to behave like regulation dogs and the children mainly tries to act like as if they was already growed up and the growed up ones has caught the prevailing glumness disease and I is approximately almost the only person in sight that's getting much enjoyment out of being in New York. All of a sudden I hears the dad blamed us blim blamming behind me I turns round quick and here comes the New York City paid fire department going to a fire. The biggest fire engine ever I sees goes scooting by tearing the road wide open and making a most awful racket. Right behind comes the hook and ladder wagon with the firemen hanging on to both sides of it trying to stick fast and put their rubber coats on at the same time and right behind it comes a big red automobile, lickety split. Setting up alongside the driver of it is a gentleman in blue clothes and brass buttons which he's got a big cigar clamped betwixt his teeth and looks highly important. But he ain't wearing a flannel shirt open at the throat but has got his coat on and it buttoned up. So I assumes it can't be the chief of the department but probably must be the mayor and in less than no time they all has swung off into a side street two squares away with me taking out after him down the middle of the street fast as I can travel. Now every town where I've been at here to four to this when the fire bell rings everybody drops whatever they is doing and goes to the fire elsewhere from New York enjoying fires is one of the main pleasures of people. But soon I is surprised to see that I'm pretty near the only person which is trailing along after the department. Whilst I'm still wondering over this circumstance but still running also a police grabs me by the arm and asks me where is I going in such a big hurry. I tells him I is going to the fire and he says to me that I might as well slow up and save my breath because it's liable to be quite a long trip for me. I asks him how come and he says the fire is probably three or four miles from here and maybe even considerable further than that. And I says to him that must make it mighty inconvenient for all concerned having the fires so far away from the engine house. At that he sort of chuckles and tells me to be on my way but to keep my eyes open and not let the cows nibble me. Well as I says to myself going away from him I may be green but I is getting some enjoyment out of being here which is more than I can say for some folks round these parts judging by what I has seen up to this here present moment. So I meanders along looking at this and that and turning corners every once in a while and after a spell it comes to me that I has meandered myself into an exceedingly different neighborhood from the one I started out from. The houses is not so tall and is more or less rusty looking and there is a set of railroad tracks running through built up on a high trestle and whilst there has been a falling off in dogs there has been an ample increase in children. The place just swarms with them. These here children is running loose all over the sidewalks and out in the streets too but it seems like to me they spends more time quarreling than what they does playing. Or maybe it sounds like quarreling because they has to hollow so loud on accountable the noises occurring round them. I decides to go back but the trouble is I don't rightly know which is the right way to turn. I've been sashaying about so first to the right and then to the left that I ain't got no more sense of direction than one of these here patent egg beaters. So I rambles on getting more and more bewildered like all the time till I comes to another police and I walks up to him and states my predicament to him very polite and tells him I needs help getting back to where I belongs at. He looks at me very strict like he can't make up his mind whether he'd better run me in for vagrancy or let me go. And then he says kind of short make it snappy then where do you live. I tells him I has done forgot the name of the street if indeed I ever heard it but from the looks of it I judges it must be the chief resident street where the best families resides. I tells him we has just moved in there Mr. Dallas Poliam and me and has started up housekeeping in the department house which stands on the principal corner. I tells him it's the department house where the inmates all lives in layers one upon top of the other like martins in a martin box. You mean apartment house he says department store but apartment house. Well what's the name of this apartment house then if you can't remember the street. That makes me scratch under my hat too because I pointedly doesn't know that neither. No mind the name boss I says just you please tell me war bouts is the leading apartment house of this year city of New York. That'll be it the lead nest one because Mr. Dallas Poliam he is accustomed to the best wherever he go. But he only acts like he's getting more and more impatient with me. Describe it he says describe it there is one chance in a thousand that might help what does it look like. So I tells him what it looks like how a little private road winds in and circles round a little place which is like a family burying ground and about the hands downstairs at the front door all being from West Indiana and about there being two elevators for the residenters and one more for the help and about us having took over the sublet family's outfit and all. No use he says when I get through that sounds just like most of the expensive ones. He starts walking off like he has done lost all interest in my case then he calls back to me over his shoulder. I'll tell you what's the matter with you he says you're lost. Yes sir I says thank you sir that's what I've been suspicion in my own set I says but I'm much obliged you agrees with me. Still that ain't helping much to find out this year police thinks the same way I does about it. Whilst I is lingering there wondering what I better do next if anything I sees a streetcar go scooting by up at the next crossing and I gets an idea. If streetcars in New York is anything like they is at home sooner or later they all turns into the main street and runs either past the city hall or to the union depot. So I allows to myself that I'll go on up yonder and climb aboard the next car which comes along and stay on her no matter how far she goes till she swings back off the branch onto the trunk line and I'll watch out then and when she goes past our corner I'll drop off. Doing it that way I figures that sooner or later I'm bound to fetch up back home again. Anyhow the scheme is worth trying especially as I can't seem to think of no better one. So I accordingly does so but I ain't staying on that car so very long not more than a mile at the most. The reason I gets off her so soon is this all at once I observes that I is skirting through a district which is practically exclusively all colored. On every side I sees nothing but colored folks both big and little. Seemingly everything in sight is organized by and for my race. Colored barbershops, colored undertaking parlors, colored dentists' offices, colored doctors' offices. On one corner there is even a colored vaudeville theater. And out in the middle of the streets stands a colored police. Excusing that the houses is different and the streets is wider it's mighty near the same as being on Plunkett's Hill on a Saturday evening. I almost expect to see that their esoph loving loafing along all dressed up fit to kill. Or maybe Red Haas Shackleford. Setting in a doorway following after his regular business of resting, or old Pappy Exol, the pastor of Zion Chapel. Rambling by with that big stomach of his and sticking out in front of him like two gallons of chitterlings wrapped up in a black gunny sack. It certainly does fill me with the homesickness longings. And then a big black man on the pavement opens his mouth wide, nigger-like, and laps at something till you can hear him half a mile, pretty near it. Which it is the first sure enough laugh I has heard since I hit New York. And right on top of that I catches the smell of fat meat frying somewheres. I just naturally can't stand it no longer. Anyhow, if I'm predestinated to be lost in New York City, it's better I should be lost amongst my own kind, which talks my native language, rather than amongst Plum Strangers. I give the conductor the high sign, and I says to him, I says, Captain, let me off before I jumps off. So he rings the signalling bell, and she stops and lets me off. Verily, before I has went hardly any distance at all, somebody hails me. I is wandering along, sort of miscellaneous, looking in the store windows and up at the tops of the buildings, when a brown-complexed man steps up to me and sticks out his hand, and he says, Hello, Thar, Alfred Ricketts. What you doing so far away from old Lynchburg? I says to him he must have made a mistake. And he says, Go on, wayboy, and quit your fooling. This is bound to be Alfred Ricketts at I used to know down in Lynchburg, Virginia. Leasewise, if paint him, it's his duplicate twin brother. He tells him, No, my name ain't Alfred Ricketts, it's Jeff Poindexter from Paduca, and I ain't never been in no place called Lynchburg in my whole life as I know of. He looks at me a minute in a kind of an unbelieving way, and then he says he begs my pardon, but his excuse is that I'm the exact spit and image of this here Alfred Ricketts. He says he's done played with him many's the time when they was both boys together. He says he ain't never in all his born days seen two fellows which they wasn't no kin to each other, and yet looked so much similar as him and me does. He says the way we favors each other is absolutely unanimous. He asks me to tell him again what my name is, and I does so, and then he says to me, What do you say you hails from? I says Paduca, Vazwar. He shakes his head kind of puzzled. Paduca, he says, I ain't never heard tell of it. Where is it? Tennessee or Arkansas? I pity his ignorance, but I tells him where Paduca is located at. It seems like the very sound of the name detains his curiosity. He just shoots the inquiring questions at me. He wants to know how big is Paduca, and what is its main business, and what river is it on or close to, and what railroads run in there, and a lot more things. So seeing he's a seeker after truth, I pumps him full. I tells him we not only has got one river at Paduca, we has got two. And I tells him about what railroads we've got running in, and about the big high water of 1913, and about the night-rider troubles some years before that. I tells him a heap else besides mainly recent doings, such as Judge Priest having retired, and the Illinois Central having built up their shops to double size. Then he excuses himself some more and steps away pretty brisk and goes into a colored billiard parlor, and I continues on my lonesome way. But inside of five minutes another fellow speaks to me, and by my own entitled name too. Only this one is a kind of a pale tallow color, with a lot of gold teeth showing and very sporty dressed. He comes busting up to me like he's overjoyed to see me and says, Hello, Jeff Poindexter, when did you get here? You sure is a sight for the sore eyes. How you leave everybody down in old Paduca? And how does your own copperosity seem to sagashuate? All the time he's saying this he's clamping my hand very affectionate, like I was his long lost brother or something. I tells him his manner is familiar, but that I can't place him. He acts surprised at that, surprised and sort of hurt-like. He asks me, don't I remember George Harris from down home? I tells him the onlyest George Harris of color I remembers is an old man which he does janeting for the First National Bank. And he speaks up very prompt and says, That's his uncle, which he is named for him and used to live with him out by the Illinois Central Shops. He says he really don't blame me so much for not placing him, because he left there its going on eight or nine years ago, just before the big high water. But he claims he used to meet me frequent and says I ain't changed much from the time when I used to be working for Judge Priest. He says he sure he'd recognized me if he'd met up with me in China, let alone its New York. He says he's been living up north for quite a spell now, and his chief owner of a pants-pressing emporium down the street apiece, and has a fine trade and is doing well. And then before I can get a stray word in edge ways, he goes on to speak of several important things which has happened down home of late. I breaks in and asks him how come he keeps such close track of events way down there, seeing he's been away so long. And he says he's just naturally so doggone fond of that town, he subscribes regular for one of the local papers, and reads it faithful, and hence that's how come he keeps up so well with what's going on. Which, speaking of papers, minds me of something, he says. It minds me at, on count of reading the papers so steady, I has a sweet streak of luck coming to me this very day. I'd like to tell you about it, poindexter. Perseed I says. Perseed. I'm going to, he says, but suppose and fuss we gets in off this year's street and sets down some whores, or we can be comfortable and not be interrupted. Trouble with me is, he says, I knows so dad blame many people round here, being prominent in business the way I is. At if I stand still more in a minute, somebody is sure to be coming up and slapping me on the back. Does you feel lack of like snack poindexter? Well it's getting to be close on to eleven o'clock now, and I has not yet nothing since breakfast except fifteen cents worth of peanut candy, so I tells him I is agreeable. We goes into a restaurant run by four and with colored, and we sets down by ourselves off at a little table, and he insists that he's doing the paying for, on account of my being a boy from his old home town, and he says for me to go the limit ordering. So I calls for a bone sirloin, and some fried potatoes and coffee, and a mess of hot biscuits, and a piece of mush melon, and one thing and another. It seems like, though, he ain't got much appetite himself. He takes just a cup of coffee, and whilst I is eating all of that provinder of his generous providing, he tells me about this here streak of luck which has come his way. First off he begins by asking me as I heard tell about the colored Arabian prince which he is now staying in New York. I says no. He says then I will be hearing about him if I sojourn's long, because the colored Arabian prince is the talk of one and all. He's stopping at the palace Afro-American hotel, and he's got more money than what he can spend, and he's going round the world, studying how black folks lives in every climb, and he's got thousands and thousands of dollars worth of jewelry which he wears constant. But the piece of jewelry which he prizes as the most precious of all, he lost it only yesterday, which it is a solid gold pin shaped like a four-leaf clover with a genuine real Arabian ruby set in the middle of it. This here gold tooth boy he tells me this while I is sauntering through the stake, and I can tell from the way he says it that he's leading up to something. Yes, sir, he says. Yesterday is when he lose it, and this morning he's got an advertisement notice inserted in the colored newspapers saying as how he's stand ready and willing to pay fifty dollars for its return to the hotel where he is stopping at. And no questions asked it. And year about half an hour before I runs into you I'm walking along the street right up here, a little ways, and I see something shiny laying in the gutter, and I stoop down and picks it up. And if it ain't the colored Arabian princess four-leaf clover pin, dog gone me. And year it is, safe and sound. And with that he reach in his pocket and pull it out and let me look at it a brief second. And I says to him that I don't begrudge him his good luck none, only I wish as it might have been me which had found it, because fifty dollars would come in mighty handy. Then I says to him, I says, I suppose you is now on your way to hand him back his belonging and claim the reward. But he shakes his head kind of dubious some. I tell you how tis poindexter, he says, to begin with. And speaking in confidences is one old time friend to another. I probably is the only as person in this year's city of New York, which the colored Arabian prince might make trouble for me if I was the one which come bringin' him back his lost pin. Ever since he's been here he's been sendin' his clothes over to by establishment, which is right round the corner from the palace African-American hotel to be pressed. And if I should turn up now with this year pin he'd most likely as not claim at I found it stuck in one of his coat lapels and taken it out and kept it. One of the chances is he'd not only refuse for to pay over the reward, but furthermore might raise a ruckus and cast a shatter on my good name, which it suddenly would hurt my professional reputation for a colored Arabian prince to be low-raident me at a way. He's lacked so many wealthy pussens is. He's suspicious in his mind. So I don't care to take no chances, much as I craves to feel them fifty dollars warmin' in the palm of my hand. But ever person which was a perfect stranger to him was to fetch the pin in and say he was walkin' long and seen it shinin' and picked it up, he'd just hand the reward right over, without a mumblin' word. Yes, I says, that's so I reckon. Taint no manner of doubt but what it's so, he says. Pointexter, he says, brisk or like. I got an ID. It just this year second, come to me. What's the reason why you can't be the ordained stranger which texts the pin back to him? You does so and I'll allow you ten dollars out of the fifty for your time and trouble. What say? I studies a minute and then I says I is sociable to the notion. He says he'll go along with me and point out to me the hotel where the colored Arabian prince is stopping at, and then tarry outside until I gets back to him with the money. I says I'll go just as soon as I has at another piece of mushmelon, which the first piece certainly was very tasty. So he waits until I has done so and then he pays the check, which comes to one eighty for me and ten cents for him and we gets up to start for it. But just as we gets to the door going out, he takes a look at a clock on the wall and he says, I can't go long with you, you'll have to go by yourself. I says, why for you can't go? He says, I just this minute remembers at I got to catch the eleven forty-two for Hartford, Connecticut, where I is getting ready to open up a branch establishment. That's why for. I enjoy in talking with somebody from my own dear estate so much at I let's the time slip by unbeknownst, and now I just about can get a boat train at the uptown station if I hurries. He scratches his head. Let me see, he says, what all is we going do about at now? Then it seems like he scratches an idea loose. I got it, he says. I'm mainly on count of my being in such a rush and you being from my hometown. I'm going mech you a heap sweeter proposition and the one which I already has made. I'm going half and this year reward with you. That's what I'm going do. Here's the plan. You jazz hands me over twenty five dollars now for my sheer and then you keeps the entire fifty which he'll pay you. See, I knows I is a fool to be doing it, but getting to Hartford on time today will mean a heap mow to me in the long run and what the difference in the money would. How about it, old boy? I says to him that it listens all right to me and I'd give him the twenty five in a minute. Only I ain't got it with me. When I says that his face falls so far his under jaw mighty near grazes the ground and then he says well how much is you got? Is you got twenty or even fifteen? I says I ain't got nothing on me in the way of ready cash only car fare. But I says I has got something on me that's worth a heap more than twenty five dollars and he says what is it? I says it's this year solid gold watch, I says, and I hauls it out and waves it before his eyes. It's worth fully forty dollars, I says, but I ain't needin' it on count of my havin' a still mohansomer one in my trunk which it was gift to me by a committee of the white folks two years ago for savin' a little white boy from drownedin' off the upper wharfboat. You tech the watch and give me say ten dollars boot, I says, and I'll collect the reward and thereby both of us'll be meckin' money, I says, because you can sell the watch anywars for not less than forty dollars. I done been offered at for it the phone now. He studies a minute and then he says that whilst he ain't doubting my word about the watch being worth that much money, still business is business and before he consents we'll have to take it to a jewelry store half a square down the street and have it valued. I says to him I says that's suitable to me, but I says I thought you was in a sweat to catch a train. I'll tech the time, he says, I can hurry and meck it. Come to think of it, he says. At train don't leave the uptown station, twelve eleven fifty foe. Eleven forty two is when she leaves from downtown. I'm glad to hear it, I says, because when the jewelry store man has got through Zamen in my watch, we can ask him to look at the din, too, and tell us if it's the genuine article. It mount possibly be, I says, that they was two of these year cloverleaf pins floatin' round loose and one of them a imitation. I haven't examined long with my watch, we both play safe. He stops right dead in his tracks. Look year, point Dexter, he says. What's the use of all this year, projectin' round and wastein' of time? You trust me, he says, and I trust you. That's fair. Year, boy, you techs the pin and collects the reward. I techs the watch and sells it for what I can get for it. Let's close the deal, because I pintedly has got to hurry from year. Hold on, I says. How about my ten dollars boot? I'll meck it five, he says. Give me the five, I says. So he counts out five ones and yells something to me about the palace Afro-American hotel, being straight down the street about half a mile on the left-hand side, and in another second he's gone from view round the nearest corner. But I does not go to look for no Afro-American hotel, nor yet for no colored Arabian prince, neither. Something seems to warn me it would only be a waste of time, so instead of which, as I steps along, I figures out where I stands in the swap. And it comes to this. I is into the extent of five dollars in cash, also one dollar and eighty cents worth of nourishing vitals, and a clover leaf pin, which it must be worth all of seventy-five cents. Unless the price of brass has took a big fall. I is out to the extent of telling one lie about saving a little boy from drowning, and also one old imitation gold watch case without any mechanical works in it. Likewise and furthermore, I can imagine the look on that gold-toothed nigger's face when he gets time to take a good look at what he's traded for. And that alone I values that fully two dollars more in private satisfaction to Jay Pointexter. So taking one thing and another, getting lost has been worth pretty close on to ten dollars, besides which it has taught me the lesson that when a trusting stranger goes forth in the great city, he's liable to fall amongst thieves. But if only he stays honest himself, and keeps his eye skinned, he cannot possibly suffer no harm at the hands of the wicked deceiver. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of Jay Pointexter Colored by Irvin S. Cobb The sleeper box recording is in the public domain. Local Colored It seems like having dealings with designing persons of my own color must have made my mind act more keen. All at once I remember is that I seen the name of our apartment house carved on a big square tombstone over the front door. And it comes to me that the same's name has got something to do with grist mills and something to do with lawsuits. I studies and studies, and then, like a flash, I gets it. Wheatley Court With this much to work on, the rest is plenty easy. A man in a drugstore consults in a telephone book and gives me the full specifications for getting back to where I has strayed from. Which it turns out it is fully three miles away from there in the southeast direction. But I buys an ice cream soda and a pack of chewing gum before I ask the drugstore man for his friendly aid. Already I has took note of the fact that most of the folks in New York acts like they hates to answer your questions without you has done them some kind of a favor first. So I places this man under obligations to me by trading with him, and then he's willing to help me. That is, he's willing, but he ain't right crazy with joy over the idea of it. If I'd have bought two ice cream sodas, I think probably he's a moved more brisk like. Still he does it. So inside of an hour more, what with riding part of the ways on streetcars and walking the rest, I is home again and glad to be there. Even so, my being gone so long ain't put nobody out, because Mr. Dallas is yet in bed, but is now thinking seriously about getting up. He complains of feeling slightly better than what he did a while back. Still he ain't got so very much appetite. Orange juice and black coffee seems ample to satisfy his desires. He also continues to remain very partial to the ice water. He says he must hurry up and dress and get outdoors because he's got an engagement to go with one of the ladies which he met the night before, and look at a little car which she's thinking about buying it, but wants to get his expert opinion on it first. He don't specify her name, but I guess it's the puny one of the two. This here, Miss Billy DeWitt. While Stuy is laying out his clothes for him to put on, he calls out to me from the bathroom that I will doubtless be interested to know that we'll be staying on in New York permanent. I ask him how come, and he says he's passed his word to go in partners with this here Mr. H. C. Rayner selling oil properties. I says to him, I says, excuse me, Mr. Dallas, but it sure does look like to me we is moving powerful fast. Only yesterday we get here, and today we is fixing to bust into business. Baz Travelin. He says you have to move fast in New York if you don't want to get run over and trampled on, and I says that certainly is the gospel truth. And he says when you meet up with an attractive proposition up here in this country, you is just naturally obliged to grab hold of it quick or else somebody else will be beating you to it. I feels myself bound to agree with that too, and then he goes on shaving himself and abusing of his skin for being so tender. I ponders a spell, and then I asks him sort of casual and accidental like, when was it that Mr. Rayner displayed this here desirable business notion to him, and he give his promise for to enter into it? Oh, he says, it was late last night after we started back from the Roadhouse. He's going to let me have a full half interest, he says. I don't say nothing out loud to that, but I casts my rolling eyes up to the ceiling, and I says in low tones to myself, I says, aha, aha, just like that. That's all I says, and I make sure he ain't overhearing me, but all the time I'm doing considerable thinking. I'm thinking that excusing one of them is white folks, and the other is mulatto-complexed, and excusing that one has got decorated teeth, and the other one just plain teeth. There's something mighty similar some way betwixt this here Mr. Rayner, and that their colored imposer, which he called himself George Harris. I can't make up my mind whether it's their expressions, or the way they looks at you out of their eyes, or the engaging way they both has of being so generous like on short notice. But it pointedly must be something or other, because when I broods about one, I can't keep from brooding about the other. But naturally I keeps all that to myself. After Mr. Dallas has done gone out, I fixes myself up something solid to eat, and then along about three o'clock I drifts downstairs and engages in friendly conversation with two of them West Indian boys. Before very long the subject of the educated bones gets introduced into the talk some way, and it so happens I has a set in my pocket, and I get some out and sort of cuddles them in my hand and rattles them gentle. And one of the two boys feels persuaded to suggest that, seeing as the work ain't pressing, us three might ramble on back into a little kind of a storeroom back of the main hall downstairs, and make a few passes just to keep the time from hanging heavy on our hands. Now privately I has always contended that craps dice is meant for home folks only. These here foreigners should not never toy with them if they expect to get ahead in the world. So the entertainment turns out just like I expected would. When fifteen minutes, or maybe twenty, has gone by very pleasantly, there is not no reason why I should linger with them. And I perutes back on upstairs taking along with me twenty-two dollars and fifty cents of strange money to get acquainted with the spare change in my pants pocket, and leaving them to West Indian delegates holding a grand lodge of sorrow betwixt themselves. So that is all of undue importance which happens on our second day. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of J-Point Dexter Colored by Irvin S. Cobb This lever-box recording is in the public domain. Gold Coast Time certainly does flitter by here in little old New York, as I has now taken to calling it. Here it has been nearly six weeks since last I'd done any authorizing, and a whole heap of things has come to pass since then. Yet when I look back at it, it seems like it was only yesterday when last I held my pen in hand. Also in that time I has learned much. When I reflect back on how sorghum-green I was when we landed here off the steam-cars, I actually feels right sorry for myself, not knowing what a road-house was, and figuring that when somebody mentioned sublet apartments they was describing the name of a family, and getting lost in Harlem the first time I went forth rambling. And all them other fool things which I'd done and said at the outsetting of our experiences. No longer ago than last evening I was saying to some of the fellow-members of at the pastime-colored Pleasure and Recreation Club on 135th Street that it's a born wonder they didn't throw a loop over me and cart me off to the idiotic asylum for safety-keeping till the newness had done war off. I must also say for Mr. Dallas that he's progressed very rapid too, and likewise the new business must be paying him powerful well right from the go-off, because we certainly has rolled up in the lap robes of luxury and living off the top skimmings of the cream. Before we has been here a week I notices there's a change taking place in Mr. Dallas. He's beginning to get dissatisfied with things as they is, and craving after things as they ain't. Near as I can figure it out, he's caught a kind of restlessness disease, which it appears to afflict everybody up in these parts one way or another. It seems like to me though he must have taken it early and in a violent form. The first symptoms is when he fetches in one of these here little slick-headed Japanese boys to do the cooking and etc., so as I can wait on him more exclusively. Anyway, that's the reason which he assigns to me, but all the same I retains my own personal views on the matter. We don't need no extra hands to help run our establishment. No more and we need water in our shoes. And my unspoken opinion is that Mr. Dallas thinks maybe the place will look more high-tonish by having an imported strange foreigner fussing round. Privately I don't lose no time designating to this here Koga, which is the slick-headed boy's name, where he gets off so far as I is concerned. No sooner does he arrive in amongst our midst than I tolls him back into the far end of the butler's pantry, and I says to him, I says, Y'all are kid, listen, I ain't responsible for your coming year, but just so surely as you start messing in my business, I'm going to be responsible for your everlasting departure. You tends to your work, and I tends to mine, and thereby we get along harmonious. But one sign of meddling from you, and I'll just reach back here to my flank pocket while I totes me a hostile razor, and then you better pick out which one of these year-winders you prefers to jump out of. He just sort of grins at that and sucks some loose air and betwixt his front teeth. That's right, I says. Save up your breathing, because if I text after you, you'll sure require to have plenty of it on hand, for purposes of fast travelling. Child, I says, use had your warning. So harken and give heed, for else you'll find yourself carved up so fine, they'll have to funeralise you on the stallment plan. Mr. Dallas, he may be the big boss, I says, but you lack-wise better pay a heap of tension to the fussed assistant deputy sub-boss. Which I'm, I says, him. Saying thus, I gives him a savagress look backward over my shoulder, and walks away stepping kind of light on my feet like a cat fixing fort of pounds. He ain't saying a word. He's just standing there reserving some more breath. Of course I ain't really aiming to start no race war. All we sit has been my constant aim to keep out of rough jams with one and all, but even so, I figures that it's just as well to get the jump on that there Japanese human siphon, and render him tame and docile from the beginning. Next thing is that Mr. Dallas begins faulting the clothes he brought along with him from home. He says to me they appeared all right when he was having a maid to order for him by M. Marcus and son, corner of Third and Kentucky Avenue, which that is our leading merchant tailor. But he can see now that they ain't got the real New York snap to him. And the ensuing word is that one of them swell Fifth Avenue shops is making him a full new outfit. Well I must admit that suits me from the ground up. It's a sign to me I'm about to inherit. And the next thing is that he invests in several cases of fancy drinkings, which a bootlegging white man fetches it up to us undercover of the darkness. I seize Mr. Dallas counting out the money for to pay him, and it certainly amounts to an important sum. I ain't questioning the wisdom of this step neither. Seeing that the stock we fetched along with us from the south is vanishing very brisk, and the new supply ought to last me and him for no telling how long, if we both is careful. The trouble with Mr. Dallas, though, is he ain't careful. Scarcely a day passes without some of his new-made northern friends dropping in on him and sobbing up high balls and cocktails and this and that. That there Mr. Bellows is one of our most earnest customers. He'll sit down empty alongside a full bottle and stay right there till the emptiness and the fullness has done changed places. Also, when it comes to liberal consuming of somebody else's liquor, Mr. H. C. Rainer has his undoubted merits. And when Mr. Dallas gives a party, which he does frequent and often, the wines and such just flows like manna from the rod of Jonah. Still that ain't pestering me much. When white folks lives high in the front parlor, niggers gets fat back in the kitchen. Then on top of all this he buys himself an automobile and hires a white chauffeur for to run her. She's one of these here low-cut, high-powerful cars, which when you wants to go somewhere is in a hurry, you just steps on her and babzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbbbbb. But she's plenty costive to run. to run. Every time she takes a deep breath there is another half-gallon of gasoline gone. If the truth must be known, Mr. Dallas has not only bought one car—he's bought two—but we don't see the second one, which is a dark blue runabout, only when Miss Billy comes round, because it seems Mr. Dallas has loaned it out to her for her own use, him paying the garage bills. Betwixt themselves they speaks of it as a loan, but I think to myself that this probably is predestinated to be one of the most permanent loans in the history of the entire loaning business. So it goes. Every day pretty near it. Delivery boys comes knocking at the service-door, bringing this and that for Mr. Dallas. If it ain't half a dozen fresh pairs of shoes, it's a sack full of these ear-golf utensils, or some new silk pajamas. And if it ain't another motoring-coat or an elaborous smoking jacket, it's a set of silver-topped brushes and combs and bottles and things for his toilet-table, with his initials cut on them. It seems like he must stop in somewheres every morning on his way downtown to business and buy himself something. So I judge as the money must be coming in mighty brisk at the bung-hole, because it certainly is pouring out mighty steady from the spigots. It also must be a powerful handy and convenient business to be in, for not only does it appear to pay so well, but it practically almost runs itself. Often Mr. Dallas ain't starting downtown till the morning is most gone, and sometimes he gets back home as early as four o'clock in the evening. Come Saturday he don't go near the headquarters at all. That astonishes me deeply, because down home on a Saturday the stores all stays open till late at night on account of the country people coming into town, and the hands at the tobacco warehouses and the factories and all being paid off, and the niggers being out doing their trading. Especially the niggers. You take the average one of them, and if he can't spend all he's got on Saturday night, it practically spoils his Sunday for him. He ain't aiming to waste none of his money saving it. So with us Saturday is the busiest day in the week, but seemingly not so in this locality. In fact, so far as I observes to date, the folks up here has got a special, separate system of their own for doing pretty near everything. More times than one, enduring this past month, I have said to myself that there certainly is a big difference betwixt Paducah and New York City. You don't notice it so much in Paducah, but lozzy how it does prone into you when you get to New York.