J. Poindexter, ColoredCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
J. Poindexter, Colored
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
African Americans -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
So I meanders along, looking at this and that, and turning corners every
once in awhile; 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's 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 'em. 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 account of all the noises occurring round
'em.
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 bewilded-like all the time, till I comes to another police and I
walks up to him and states my perdicterment 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 vagromcy or let me go, and then he says, kind of
short:
"Make it snappy, then. Where d'ye 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 Pulliam 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. '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?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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