"What is wrong with people?… Why do we never get to know one another?… Why is it that we get born and live and die here in this world without ever finding out what anyone else is like?… No, what is the strangest thing of all—why is it that all our efforts to know people in this world lead only to greater ignorance and confusion than before? We get together and talk, and say we think and feel and believe in such a way, and yet what we really think and feel and believe we never say at all. Why is this? We talk and talk in an effort to understand another person, and yet almost all we say is false: we hardly ever say what we mean or tell the truth—it all leads to greater misunderstanding and fear than before—it would be better if we said nothing. Tomorrow I shall dress and go out on the street and bow and smile and flatter people, laying it on with a trowel, because I want them to like me, I want to make’a good impression,’to be a’success’—and yet I have no notion what it is all about. When I pass Judge Junius Pearson on the street I will smile and bow and try to make a good impression on him, and if he speaks to me I shall almost fawn upon him in order to flatter my way into his good graces. Why? I do not like him, I hate his long pointed nose, and the sneering and disdainful look upon his face: I think he is’looking down’on me—but I know that he goes with the’swell’social set and is invited out to all the parties at Catawba House by Mrs. Goulderbilt and is received by them as a social equal. And I feel that if Junius Pearson should accept me as his social equal it would help me—get me forward somehow—make me a success—get me an invitation to Catawba House. And yet it would get me nothing; even if I were Mrs. Goulderbilt’s closest friend, what good would it do me? But the people I really like and feel at home with are working people of Papa’s kind. The people I really like are Ollie Gant, and old man Alec Ramsay, and big Mike Fogarty, and Mr. Jannadeau, and Myrtis, my little nigger servant girl, and Mr. Luther, the fish man down in the market, and the nigger Jacken, the fruit and vegetable man, and Ernest Pegram, and Mr. Duncan and the Tarkintons—all the old neighbours down on Woodson Street—and Tony Scarsati and Mr. Pappas. Mr. Pappas is just a Greek luncheon-room proprietor, but he seems to me to be one of the finest people I have ever known, and yet if Junius Pearson saw me talking to him I should try to make a joke out of it—to make a joke out of talking to a Greek who runs a restaurant. In the same way, when some of my new friends see me talking to people like Mr. Jannadeau or Mike Fogarty or Ollie or Ernest Pegram or the Tarkintons or the
