music and watch the gaiety. If I had won, this was in accord with my
mood; if I had lost, it made me forget. I at last realized that making
cigars for a living and gambling for a living could not both be
carried on at the same time, and I resolved to give up the cigar
making. This resolution led me into a life which held me bound more
than a year. During that period my regular time for going to bed was
somewhere between four and six o'clock in the mornings. I got up late
in the afternoons, walked about a little, then went to the gambling
house or the "Club." My New York was limited to ten blocks; the
boundaries were Sixth Avenue from Twenty-third to Thirty-third
Streets, with the cross streets one block to the west. Central Park
was a distant forest, and the lower part of the city a foreign land.
I look back upon the life I then led with a shudder when I think what
would have been had I not escaped it. But had I not escaped it, I
should have been no more unfortunate than are many young colored men
who come to New York. During that dark period I became acquainted with
a score of bright, intelligent young fellows who had come up to the
great city with high hopes and ambitions and who had fallen under the
spell of this under life, a spell they could not throw off. There
was one popularly known as "the doctor"; he had had two years in the
Harvard Medical School, but here he was, living this gas-light life,
his will and moral sense so enervated and deadened that it was
impossible for him to break away. I do not doubt that the same thing
is going on now, but I have sympathy rather than censure for these
victims, for I know how easy it is to slip into a slough from which it
takes a herculean effort to leap.

I regret that I cannot contrast my views of life among colored people
of New York; but the truth is, during my entire stay in this city I
did not become acquainted with a single respectable family. I knew