J. Poindexter, ColoredCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
J. Poindexter, Colored
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
African Americans -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
He tells me to take them vittles 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 on out for awhile 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 still can joke.
So I goes on out, just strolling along in a general direction, a-looking
at this and admiring of that; 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 'em 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. 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. 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 'em. And they ain't
stopping one another when they meets 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 a-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 'em on
chains and jerking 'em up sharp when they tries to linger and smell
round for 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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