J. Poindexter, ColoredCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
J. Poindexter, Colored
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
African Americans -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
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?
Chapter III
_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 mainest 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 'tis 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. Beforehand,
Mr. 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
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. 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 'em would be for him to
have both legs sawed off at the ankles. You'd think that, being up-town,
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 is 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
a-been expecting us. The way they fusses over Mr. 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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