So, after about two weeks of being alone, I gets so restless I feels like I can't stand it very much longer without breaking loose someway. So one Sunday about half past two o'clock in the evening, I'm going on past a young white gentleman by the name of Mr. Dallas Pulliam's house and he comes out on his front porch and calls over to me and tells me to come on in there 'cause he wants to talk to me about something. So I crosses over from the other side of the street and walks up to the porch steps and takes off my hat and asks him how he is getting along and he says he ain't got no complaint and he asks me how is I getting along my own self and I tells him just sort of toler'ble so-and-so, and then he says to me how would I like to take a trip to New York City? I thinks he must be funning. But I says to him, I says: "How come New York City, Mr. Dallas?" So he tells me that here lately he's been studying a right smart about going to New York and staying there a spell on a sort of a vacationlike, and if he likes it maybe he'll settle there and go into business. He says he's about made up his mind to take some likely black boy along with him for to be his body-servant and look after his clothes and things and everything and he's thinking that maybe I might be the one to fill the bill; and then he says to me: "How about it, Jeff--want to go along and give the big town the once-over or not?" I then sees he is not funning but is making me a straight business proposition. I thanks him and says to him that I has ever had the crave to travel far and wide and that I likewise has often heard New York spoke of as a very pleasant place to go to, by them which has done so, and also a place where something or other is going on most of the time. But I says to him I'm afraid I can't go on account I'm under obligations to Judge Priest by reasons of us having been together so long and him having left me in complete utter charge of our house. He says, though, he thinks maybe he can attend to that part of it all right; he says he'll write a letter to the Judge specifying about what's come up and he's pretty sure it can be fixed up so's I can go. He says if I don't like the job after I gets there, he'll pay my way back home again any time I wants to come, or when the old judge needs me, either one. He says he ain't adopting me, he's just borrowing me.