Yes sir, the run of colored folks is much more secretious than what the run of the white folks give 'em credit for. I reckon they has been made so. In times past they has met up with so many white folks which taken the view that everything black men and black women done in their lodges or their churches or amongst their own color was something to joke about and poke fun at. Now, you take me. I is perfectly willing to laugh with the white folks and I can laugh to order for 'em, if the occasion appears suitable, but I is not filled up with no deep yearnings to have 'em laughing at me and my private doings. 'Specially if it's strange white folks. Furthermore there's this about it: I've taken due notice that, whites and blacks alike, pretty near anybody will resent your coming to 'em on your own say-so and telling 'em right out of a clear sky that they is making a grievous big mistake in doing this or that. If they themselves takes the lead--if they seeks you out of their own accord and says to you, confidential-like, they is in a peck of trouble and craves to know how they is going to get out from under the load--why, that's different. Then you can step in, in friendship's name, and do your best to help 'em unravel the tangle which they has got themselves snarled up in it. If you asks me, I would say that advice gets a heap warmer welcome where you goes hunting for it than where it comes hunting for you. And, likewise, sympathy is something which you appreciates all the more if you went out shopping for it yourself. You don't want it to come knocking at the door like one of these here old peddlers taking orders for enlarging crayon portraits and forcing its way right into your fireside circle whether or no, and camping there in your lap. Moreover, speaking in particular of our own case, what right has I got to be intimating to Mr. Dallas my private beliefs about the private characters of this here brisk crowd which he has gone and got so thick with since we arrived here on the scene? Right from the first I has had my own personal convictions about the set he's in with. I has made up my mind that they ain't the genuine real quality; that they is just a slicked-up, highly-polished imitation of the real quality; that they ain't doing things so much as they is overdoing 'em. The way I looks at it, they bears the same relation to regulation high-toney folks which a tin minnow does to sure-enough live bait. You maybe might fool a fish with it but you couldn't fool the world at large for so very long. And as for me, I ain't been fooled at all, not at no time. But I naturally can't go stating my presenterments to Mr. Dallas without he the same as practically invites me first for to do so. Now, can I? But if he finds it out for himself and approaches me, that's a roan horse of another color.