At the moment I cannot recall the name of any other person whatever who, at the age of twenty-three, has enjoyed so picturesque and rambling an existence as Langston Hughes. Indeed, a complete account of his disorderly and delightfully fantastic career would make a fascinating picaresque romance which I hope this young Negro will write before so much more befalls him that he may find it difficult to capture all the salient episodes within the limits of a single volume.
He attended Central High School, from which he graduated, at Cleveland, Ohio, while in the summer, there and in Chicago, he worked as delivery- and dummy-boy in hat-stores.
In his senior year he was elected class poet and editor of the Year Book. After four years in Cleveland, he once more joined his father in Mexico, only to migrate to New York where he attended Columbia University. There, finding the environment distasteful, or worse, he remained till spring, when he quit, broke with his father and, with thirteen dollars in cash, went on his own. First, he worked for a truck-farmer on Staten Island; next, he delivered flowers for Thorley; at length he partially satisfied an insatiable craving to go to sea by signing up with an old ship anchored in the Hudson for the winter.
Oh, the little black girls of Burutu! Oh, the blue, blue bay of Loanda! Returning to New York with plenty of money and a monkey, he presently shipped again—this time for Holland.
Again he came back to New York and again he sailed—on his twenty-second birthday: February 1, Three weeks later he found himself in Paris with less than seven dollars. Later he was employed, first as second cook, then as waiter at the Grand Duc, where the Negro entertainer, Florence, sang at this epoch. Here he made friends with an Italian family who carried him off to their villa at Desenzano on Lago di Garda where he passed a happy month, followed by a night in Verona and a week in Venice.
