Read "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" by James Weldon Johnson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I have now reached that part of my narrative where I must be brief, and touch only lightly 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.