Right after that a young white gentleman he comes looking for me to take down my full entitlements and he says I will be honorably mentioned by name on the program of the picture which they now is making, when it's done. And Mr. Dallas he tells me I can take the rest of the day off for to celebrate having broke into the movies.
But I figures I has got something better to do than just to be gallivanting to and fro on a frolic. A notion has busted out insides of my brains. So right off I puts off across town for West One-Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street hoping for to find one U. S. G. Petty, Colored.
Some time back, as I remembers, I made brief mention about having affiliated myself into the Pastime Colored Pleasure and Recreation Club, Inc. Only, the last word--_Inc._--is not usually spoke when you is naming the club, by reason of its sounding so much like a personal reflection upon the prevailing complexion of some of the members. Still, that is the way it is wrote out on the letter-heads and the initiation blanks.
I has belonged for going on more than a month now and I spends much of my spare time in the club-rooms. I feels more comfortable among my fellow-affiliators than I does any place else in this town. Looking back on it I'm convinced 'twas up there I first began to get shut of the grievous homestick pangs which afflicted me so sorefully following after our advent into these parts. Up to now I has not spoke of my being homesick because it seemed like to me the mainest job was to set down what come to pass without paying much heed to private sensations upon the part of the scribe thereof, but, if the truth must now be confessed, I oftentimes was mighty nigh completely overcome by my sufferings from the same during them opening weeks of the present sojourn.
At the beginning I used to get so tired, night-times, tramping about streets which was full of utter strangers and not never speaking a word to nobody nor seeing a friendly face, that I liked to died, dad-blame if I didn't! If I stood still they'd run right on over me and if I walked on I didn't have nowheres to go and I'd be so exhaustified from looking at sights all by myself that I'd get to wishing I'd never see another sight again as long as I lived, without I had somebody I knowed along with me to help me look at it. And then I'd come morosing on back to the apartment and probably Mr. Dallas he'd be out and nobody there but that there slick-headed Japanee boy. I tried sociable talk with him once or twice but you really don't derive no great amount of nourishment from talking with somebody which thinks language is sucking your breath in through your front teeth and once in awhile grinning like one of these here pumpkin Jack-mer-lanterns. So I soon learned the lesson of just letting him be.