J. Poindexter, ColoredCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
J. Poindexter, Colored
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
African Americans -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
Also in that time I has learned much. When I reflects 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 sub-let 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 done
and said at the outsetting of our experiences! No longer ago than last
evening I was saying to some of the fellow-members up at the Pastime
Colored Pleasure and Recreation Club, on One-Hundred and Thirty-fifth
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 wore 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 is 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 a-taken it early and in a violent form.
The first symptoms is when he fetches in one of these here little
slick-headed Japanee boys to do the cooking and et cetera, so's 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'n we
needs water in our shoes, and my onspoken opinion is that Mr. Dallas
thinks maybe the place 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:
"Yaller kid, lis'sen: I ain't 'sponsible fur yore comin' yere, but jest
so shorely ez you starts messin' in my bus'ness I'm goin' be 'sponsible
fur yore everlastin' departure. You 'tends to yore wu'k an' I 'tends to
mine an' tharby we gits along harmonious. But one sign of meddlin' frum
you an' I'll jest reach back yere to my flank pocket whar I totes me a
hosstile razor an' 'en you better pick out w'ich one of these yere
winders you perfurs to jump out of."
He just sort of grins at that and sucks some loose air in betwixt his
front teeth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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