I stood outside the group, partly from a dislike of being crowded, but mostly because I tend to be kind of hot-natured, which means I have a certain affinity with cold weather.

...and since one told one's intimate friend all that one knew, — and often a great deal that one didn't know,— the tale-bearing, and news, and so on, of one god's-sib to another began itself to be called god's-sib, or gossip, until now, when all manner of scandal and newsmongery has come to be universally called gossip

Less well known but perhaps even more interesting than Stephenson is Court Asher, the second gentleman from Indiana. Asher is a more convincing bigot than Stephenson, one more homegrown and more Hoosier than the puffed-up grand dragon, […]

Around the poolroom I defended the guys I felt were my real brothers, the colored musicians who made music that sent me, not a lot of beat-up old hamfats who sang and played a commercial excuse for the real thing.