When I reached Macon, I stopped only long enough to get the main part of my luggage and to buy a ticket for New York.

All along the journey I was occupied in debating with myself the step which I had decided to take.  I argued that to forsake one’s race to better one’s condition was no less worthy an action than to forsake one’s country for the same purpose.  I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead.  All the while I understood that it was not discouragement or fear or search for a larger field of action and opportunity that was driving me out of the Negro race.  I knew that it was shame, unbearable shame.  Shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals.  For certainly the law would restrain and punish the malicious burning alive of animals.

So once again I found myself gazing at the towers of New York and wondering what future that city held in store for me.

XI

I have now reached that part of my narrative where I must be brief and touch only on important facts; therefore the reader must make up his mind to pardon skips and jumps and meager details.

When I reached New York, I was completely lost.  I could not have felt more a stranger had I been suddenly dropped into Constantinople.  I knew not where to turn or how to strike out.  I was so oppressed by a feeling of loneliness that the temptation to visit my old home in Connecticut was well-nigh irresistible.  I reasoned, however, that unless I found my old music teacher, I should be, after so many years of absence, as much of a stranger there as in New York; and, furthermore, that in view of the step which I had decided to take, such a visit would be injudicious.  I remembered, too, that I had some property there in the shape of a piano and a few books, but decided that it would not be worth what it might cost me to take possession.

By reason of the fact that my living expenses in the South had been very small, I still had nearly four hundred dollars of my capital left.  In contemplation of this, my natural and acquired Bohemian tastes asserted themselves, and I decided to have a couple of weeks’ good time before worrying seriously about the future.  I went to Coney Island and the other resorts, took in the pre-season shows along Broadway, and ate at first-class restaurants; but I shunned the old Sixth Avenue district as though it were pest-infected.  My few days of pleasure made appalling inroads upon what cash I had, and caused me to see that it required a good deal of money to live in New York as I wished to live and that I should have to find, very soon, some more or less profitable employment.  I was