Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

The next day, they awoke too late to look for work, but the narrator was not worried—he had 300 dollars and promptly lost 50 dollars of it at the same craps table from the night before. But he was sure he would make the money back; two of his friends decided to go home, proving that “gamblers are rated, not by the way in which they win, but by the way in which they lose.” However, he managed to convince them to come to the “Club,” and they found it much like the night before: again, the narrator was entranced by the piano music—he took a turn and tried but failed to imitate the pianist’s style. They went home, woke early the next morning, and found work rolling cigars. The narrator spent most of his money on dice and the “Club,” and increasingly found himself exhausted, missing work to stay home and sleep.

Soon, the narrator decided to give up work and focus full-time on gambling, like so many other “bright, intelligent young fellows who had come up to the great city with high hopes and ambitions.” Unlike many of them, he managed to escape. During his time in New York, he “did not become acquainted with a single respectable family,” even though he knew that many certainly existed.

The narrator managed to supplement his inconsistent gambling income by becoming “a remarkable player of ragtime,” using his classical training to become, reputedly, the best in New York. He played almost nightly at the “Club”—more and more white patrons started coming, people started calling him the “professor,” and of course music distracted him from gambling.

Most of the narrator’s income came through a friend: a “clean cut, slender, but athletic looking man” marked by “the indefinable but unmistakable stamp of culture,” who sat silently in the corner and sent over five dollars every night he came. One night, the man (later referred to as the millionaire) called him over and offered a job playing for a dinner party at his apartment, which turned out to be luxurious and so comfortable he fell asleep in his chair. The butler brought him dinner, then sent him to work as the guests were arriving—he began with classical music, to which the refined audience of “about a dozen” paid close attention before turning to chatter and dining.

During dinner, the narrator began to play ragtime from the adjoining room—the dining room fell silent, and some of the women in attendance began gathering around to watch and ask him questions. He played virtuosically for the rest of the party and, afterward, the guests enthusiastically declared him “the most unique entertainment they had ‘ever’ enjoyed.” The millionaire gave him 20 dollars and offered to hire him for the future, so long as he would not play for any other private parties. Thereafter, the narrator played at various parties, at the host’s house and his friends’, or even for him alone, for hours at a time, while he listened, chain-smoking with his eyes closed. Sometimes these hours of continuous performance exhausted the narrator, but he was paid rather well.

The narrator also continued to play at the “Club,” but only as one of “the visiting celebrities,” and started to win affection from the women who went there, including the rich widow. A friend warned him about the rich widow’s black companion, with whom she had apparently been fighting—but his “finer feelings entirely overcame my judgment,” although he soon realized he was only being used to make her “surly black despot” jealous.

One night, the widow’s companion found the narrator drinking with the widow; they were both frightened, and the man “whipped out a revolver and fired,” striking her in the throat. The man kept shooting; the narrator ran outside and walked frantically until he ran into the millionaire in a cab. He explained what happened and his employer decided to take him, instead of the valet, to Europe the next day. They drove around the park, but the narrator could not stop thinking about “that beautiful white throat with the ugly wound.”