Irvin S. Cobb

“ I stops close by the door and for a spell I watches what's going on and I thinks to myself that whilst there may be a-plenty of money in the moving-picture business, and doubtless is, the bulk of it is liable to stay in it permanent. Never before in my whole life has I seen so many folks letting on like they was fixing for to transact something important and then not doing it. If they was all on piece-work they couldn't earn enough to pay for half-soling the shoes which they wears out running about getting in one another's way. ”

“ 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 gets 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 three gets out in the little porches betwixt the cars and confabs together. ”

“ WELL, in the morning I arranges a snack of nuturious breakfast on a tray and takes it in to 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 a-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. ”

“ Being a new member, the way I is, I prefers not to declare myself in at the go-off but just to sort of hang back and catch the general drift of the old heads before I commits myself.
Regardless of your private convictions it don't hurt you none, sometimes, to throw in with the majority. Traveling with the current instead of against it, you maybe is not so prominent but you gets fewer bumps across your head. ”

“ 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 onto 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, licketty-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. ”

“ 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 Paducah. She is not no side-wheeler nor yet she ain't no stern-wheeler, which all the steamboats I has ever [39] 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 hump-back 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. ”

“ It makes you want to get up there and fly round in it. But down below in the street there ain't so very much brightness by reasons 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 which-a-way, 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. ”

“ I takes my head in both my hands and I says to myself: What kind of a lady is this here one we got to deal with? With her raisings, what does she probably like the best in the world? What does she probably hate the most in the world? ”

“ Dallas he says to me it's a quiet hotel up-town; but when we arrives at it I takes a look around and I says to myself that if this here is a [42] quiet hotel they shore 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 away 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. ”

“ At the beginning I used to get so tired, night-times, tramping about streets which was full of utter strangers and not never speaking a word to nobody nor seeing a friendly face, that I liked to died, dad-blame if I didn't! ”

“ Raynor still laughing from off the top of his palates and the sickly one, Miss DeWitt's 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 [60] 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 has I seen a young white gentleman more thoroughly overtaken than what he is. ”

“ Dallas' pride to have all the folks down home finding out that he's made another disasterful move in business. By roundabout ways it has come to my ears that he's been writing letters back telling about how well he's doing up here in New York and now, if it should come out in the papers that he's made one more bad bustup on top of all them finance mistakes he committed before he come North, and he should have to go South again, broke and shamed at being broke, I reckons it would just about kill him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yes sir, the run of colored folks is much more secretious than what the run of the white folks give 'em credit for. I reckon they has been made so. In times past they has met up with so many white folks which taken the view that everything black men and black women done in their lodges or their churches or amongst their own color was something to joke about and poke fun at. ”

“ Whilst I is lingering there wondering what I better do next, if anything, I sees a street-car go scooting by up at the next crossing, and I gets an idea. If street cars in New York is anything like they is at [70] 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 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 watch out then, and when she goes past our corner drop off. ”

“ 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 'twould 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 in to the extent of five dollars in cash, also one dollar and eighty cents' worth of nourishing vittles, 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. ”

“ Dallas says, that's how it stands. If he goes on and on along the way he seems to be headed it's only a question of time till all his money will be plumb drained from him. He tells me that he'd be willing to pull out now and take his losses and charge 'em up to the expenses of getting a Wall Street education only, he says, he can't. I asks him then what's the reason he can't? He says because when the papers was drawed up—by Mr. Raynor—he obligated himself in such a twistified way that it seems he's bound hard and fast to stick to the bitter end. ”

“ Dallas is proof to my mind that somebody must a-told 'em 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 taxihack door for us to get out ”

“ Jeff, the big mistake I made at the start was that I tied up with the wrong outfit. I thought I was joining in with a group of typical successful live New Yorkers; I know now how wrong I was. There must be plenty of real people here—people who take life in moderation; people who are fair and kindly [179] and reasonable; people who can find pleasure in simple things and who don't pretend to know all there is to know, or to be what they're not. ”

“ As I dope it out, if I can produce pictures which will appeal particularly to your people I'll have a steady market through the big exchanges; because, if I know anything about the tastes of the general public, white people will enjoy all-colored comedies—if they're done right—almost as much as colored people will. ”

“ One night five or six of us Pastimers in good standing is setting round not doing nothing in particular, but just setting, when talk arises concerning of Gabriel, the Black Prophet of Abyssinia, which his name is now on everybody's tongue, more or less. ”

“ All day long folks is dropping in to sample the available refreshments and most of 'em likes the sample so well they camps right there till far into the night. I mingles up a big glass reservoir full of egg-nog, which it seems to give 'special satisfaction to one and all. The way these here guests of ours bails it up you'd think they was in a sinking skiff half a mile from shore. As he ladles out the first batch Mr. Dallas states that this here egg-nog is made according to a recipe which has been handed down in his family since right after the Revolutionizing War. ”

“ So now I just puts two and two together, and I says to myself that if he's entertaining them misled ideas about my race, he doubtless is also got the notion in his head that every quality white gentleman from down South, and more especially them which hails from Kentucky, totes a pistol on the flank and is forever looking for a chance to massacrete somebody against which he's took a disfancy. ”

“ No sir, if I has to do traveling in extreme foreign-off parts I'll go along with some of my own white folks which I can put trust in their words and dependence on their acts. And, finally, the idea of my returning to Affika does not seem to appeal to me in no way nor at no time whatsomever. What's the use of returning to a place where you ain't never been? ”

“ If they themselves takes the lead—if they seeks you out of their own accord and says to you, confidential-like, they is in a peck of trouble and craves to know how they is going to get out from under the load—why, that's different. Then you can step in, in friendship's name, and do your best to help 'em unravel the tangle which they has got themselves snarled up in it. ”

“ He don't look like he's genuine colored; he looks more like he's been shining up a cook stove and got most of the polish rubbed off onto his face and hands. He don't act like he's genuine colored, neither. I judges he must have studied the business of acting like colored folks from watching nigger minstrel shows. He keeps rolling his eyes up in his head and smacking [129] his lips, the same as an end-man does, which is all right, I reckon, when you is an end-man but which does not fill the bill when you is letting on to be a sure-enough black person ”

“ I ain't no seventh son of a seventh gun, which they tells me they has the gift of prophecy laid upon them at birth, nor yet I ain't no mind-reader, but, even so, I says to myself that I don't need but one guess at the true nature of what 'tis she's writing. ”

“ 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. 'Cause I pointedly doesn't know that neither.
"Nummine the name, boss," I says, "jest you, please suh, tell me whar'bouts is the leadin' apartment-house of this yere city of Noo Yawk; that'll be it—the leadin'est one. 'Cause Mr. Dallas Pulliam he is accustom' to the best whar'ever he go."
But he only acts like he's getting more and more impatient with me.
"Describe it," he says, "describe it! There's one chance in a thousand that might help. What does it look like?" ”

“ Dallas my private beliefs about the private characters of this here brisk crowd which he has gone and got so thick with since we arrived here on the scene? Right from the first I has had my own personal convictions about the set he's in with. I has made up my mind that they ain't the genuine real quality; that they is just a slicked-up, highly-polished imitation of the real quality; that they ain't doing things so much as they is overdoing 'em. The way I looks at it, they bears the same relation to regulation high-toney folks which a tin minnow does to sure-enough live bait. ”

“ So then everybody loafs round a spell, whilst the director confabs with a little thin nervoused-looking man called Mr. Simons, with glasses on. And then the director announces that they won't try to shoot the mob scene today and all the extras can go till nine o'clock tomorrow morning, and in the meantime he trusts and prays that they may get a little sense or something in their heads. So, accordingly, most of the multitude departs leaving only about a dozen or more actor ladies and gentlemen setting round on odds and ends and seemingly very grateful for the peaceful lull. ”

“ In nearly every good-sized town in this country, North and South, there's at least one moving-picture house catering to your people. That's point number two. But day after day and night after night those patrons see nothing but pictures written by white people, directed by white men, and acted by white people. ”

“ And pretty soon the old camp-meeting tone comes creeping into their voices and their eyes starts shining like they was repentant sinners gathered at the mourners' bench and they begins to sort of sing their words and generally work themselves up into a state of grace. ”

“ I finds that the most of my race up here aims to copy their actions after white folks when they is showing themselves off in public. They is forever trying to talk like whites and trying to appear deeply oninterested in passing things, the same as some white folks does, and even trying to think like whites, I expect. ”

“ Some white folks, seems like, is just naturally beset with a craving to bust into [115] colored folkses' business and try for to run their personal affairs for 'em. Mr. Dallas, he is not gaited that way in no particular whatsoever; him having been born and raised South and naturally knowing better anyhow; but some I might mention is. Still, and even so, most white folks don't care deeply for anybody at all, much less it's somebody which is colored, to be telling 'em onpleasant and onwelcome tidings. ”