As the south-bound train was leaving the station at Philadelphia, a
gentleman took his seat in the single sleeping-car attached to the
train, and proceeded to make himself comfortable. He hung up his hat and
opened his newspaper, in which he remained absorbed for a quarter of an
hour. When the train had left the city behind, he threw the paper aside,
and looked around at the other occupants of the car. One of these, who
had been on the car since it had left New York, rose from his seat upon
perceiving the other's glance, and came down the aisle.
"How do you do, Dr. Burns?" he said, stopping beside the seat of the
Philadelphia passenger.
The gentleman looked up at the speaker with an air of surprise, which,
after the first keen, incisive glance, gave place to an expression of
cordial recognition.
"Why, it's Miller!" he exclaimed, rising and giving the other his hand,
"William Miller--Dr. Miller, of course. Sit down, Miller, and tell me
all about yourself,--what you're doing, where you've been, and where
you're going. I'm delighted to meet you, and to see you looking so
well--and so prosperous."
"I deserve no credit for either, sir," returned the other, as he took
the proffered seat, "for I inherited both health and prosperity. It is a
fortunate chance that permits me to meet you."
The two acquaintances, thus opportunely thrown together so that they
might while away in conversation the tedium of their journey,
represented very different and yet very similar types of manhood. A
celebrated traveler, after many years spent in barbarous or savage
lands, has said that among all varieties of mankind the similarities are
vastly more important and fundamental than the differences. Looking at
these two men with the American eye, the differences would perhaps be
the more striking, or at least the more immediately apparent, for the
first was white and the second black, or, more correctly speaking,
brown; it was even a light brown, but both his swarthy complexion and
his curly hair revealed what has been described in the laws of some of
our states as a "visible admixture" of African blood.
Having disposed of this difference, and having observed that the white
man was perhaps fifty years of age and the other not more than thirty,
it may be said that they were both tall and sturdy, both well dressed,
the white man with perhaps a little more distinction; both seemed from
their faces and their manners to be men of culture and accustomed to the
society of cultivated people. They were both handsome men, the elder
representing a fine type of Anglo-Saxon, as the term is used in speaking
of our composite white population; while the mulatto's erect form, broad
shoulders, clear eyes, fine teeth, and pleasingly moulded features
showed nowhere any sign of that degeneration which the pessimist so
sadly maintains is the inevitable heritage of mixed races.
As to their personal relations, it has already appeared that they were
members of the same profession. In past years they had been teacher and
pupil. Dr. Alvin Burns was professor in the famous medical college
where Miller had attended lectures. The professor had taken an interest
in his only colored pupil, to whom he had been attracted by his
earnestness of purpose, his evident talent, and his excellent manners
and fine physique. It was in part due to Dr. Burns's friendship that
Miller had won a scholarship which had enabled him, without drawing too
heavily upon his father's resources, to spend in Europe, studying in the
hospitals of Paris and Vienna, the two most delightful years of his
life. The same influence had strengthened his natural inclination toward
operative surgery, in which Dr. Burns was a distinguished specialist of
national reputation.
Miller's father, Adam Miller, had been a thrifty colored man, the son of
a slave, who, in the olden time, had bought himself with money which he
had earned and saved, over and above what he had paid his master for his
time. Adam Miller had inherited his father's thrift, as well as his
trade, which was that of a stevedore, or contractor for the loading and
unloading of vessels at the port of Wellington. In the flush turpentine
days following a few years after the civil war, he had made money. His
savings, shrewdly invested, had by constant accessions become a
competence. He had brought up his eldest son to the trade; the other he
had given a professional education, in the proud hope that his children
or his grandchildren might be gentlemen in the town where their
ancestors had once been slaves.
Upon his father's death, shortly after Dr. Miller's return from Europe,
and a year or two before the date at which this story opens, he had
promptly spent part of his inheritance in founding a hospital, to which
was to be added a training school for nurses, and in time perhaps a
medical college and a school of pharmacy. He had been strongly tempted
to leave the South, and seek a home for his family and a career for
himself in the freer North, where race antagonism was less keen, or at
least less oppressive, or in Europe, where he had never found his color
work to his disadvantage. But his people had needed him, and he had
wished to help them, and had sought by means of this institution to
contribute to their uplifting. As he now informed Dr. Burns, he was
returning from New York, where he had been in order to purchase
equipment for his new hospital, which would soon be ready for the
reception of patients.
"How much I can accomplish I do not know," said Miller, "but I'll do
what I can. There are eight or nine million of us, and it will take a
great deal of learning of all kinds to leaven that lump."
"It is a great problem, Miller, the future of your race," returned the
other, "a tremendously interesting problem. It is a serial story which
we are all reading, and which grows in vital interest with each
successive installment. It is not only your problem, but ours. Your race
must come up or drag ours down."
"We shall come up," declared Miller; "slowly and painfully, perhaps, but
we shall win our way. If our race had made as much progress everywhere
as they have made in Wellington, the problem would be well on the way
toward solution."
"Wellington?" exclaimed Dr. Burns. "That's where I'm going. A Dr. Price,
of Wellington, has sent for me to perform an operation on a child's
throat. Do you know Dr. Price?"
"Quite well," replied Miller, "he is a friend of mine."
"So much the better. I shall want you to assist me. I read in the
Medical Gazette, the other day, an account of a very interesting
operation of yours. I felt proud to number you among my pupils. It was a
remarkable case--a rare case. I must certainly have you with me in this
one."
"I shall be delighted, sir," returned Miller, "if it is agreeable to all
concerned."
Several hours were passed in pleasant conversation while the train sped
rapidly southward. They were already far down in Virginia, and had
stopped at a station beyond Richmond, when the conductor entered the
car.
"All passengers," he announced, "will please transfer to the day coaches
ahead. The sleeper has a hot box, and must be switched off here."
Dr. Burns and Miller obeyed the order, the former leading the way into
the coach immediately in front of the sleeping-car.
"Let's sit here, Miller," he said, having selected a seat near the rear
of the car and deposited his suitcase in a rack. "It's on the shady
side."
Miller stood a moment hesitatingly, but finally took the seat indicated,
and a few minutes later the journey was again resumed.
When the train conductor made his round after leaving the station, he
paused at the seat occupied by the two doctors, glanced interrogatively
at Miller, and then spoke to Dr. Burns, who sat in the end of the seat
nearest the aisle.
"This man is with you?" he asked, indicating Miller with a slight side
movement of his head, and a keen glance in his direction.
"Certainly," replied Dr. Burns curtly, and with some surprise. "Don't
you see that he is?"
The conductor passed on. Miller paid no apparent attention to this
little interlude, though no syllable had escaped him. He resumed the
conversation where it had been broken off, but nevertheless followed
with his eyes the conductor, who stopped at a seat near the forward end
of the car, and engaged in conversation with a man whom Miller had not
hitherto noticed.
As this passenger turned his head and looked back toward Miller, the
latter saw a broad-shouldered, burly white man, and recognized in his
square-cut jaw, his coarse, firm mouth, and the single gray eye with
which he swept Miller for an instant with a scornful glance, a
well-known character of Wellington, with whom the reader has already
made acquaintance in these pages. Captain McBane wore a frock coat and a
slouch hat; several buttons of his vest were unbuttoned, and his
solitaire diamond blazed in his soiled shirt-front like the headlight of
a locomotive.
The conductor in his turn looked back at Miller, and retraced his steps.
Miller braced himself for what he feared was coming, though he had
hoped, on account of his friend's presence, that it might be avoided.
"Excuse me, sir," said the conductor, addressing Dr. Burns, "but did I
understand you to say that this man was your servant?"
"No, indeed!" replied Dr. Burns indignantly. "The gentleman is not my
servant, nor anybody's servant, but is my friend. But, by the way, since
we are on the subject, may I ask what affair it is of yours?"
"It's very much my affair," returned the conductor, somewhat nettled at
this questioning of his authority. "I'm sorry to part _friends_, but the
law of Virginia does not permit colored passengers to ride in the white
cars. You'll have to go forward to the next coach," he added, addressing
Miller this time.
"I have paid my fare on the sleeping-car, where the separate-car law
does not apply," remonstrated Miller.
"I can't help that. You can doubtless get your money back from the
sleeping-car company. But this is a day coach, and is distinctly marked
'White,' as you must have seen before you sat down here. The sign is put
there for that purpose."
He indicated a large card neatly framed and hung at the end of the car,
containing the legend, "White," in letters about a foot long, painted in
white upon a dark background, typical, one might suppose, of the
distinction thereby indicated.
"You shall not stir a step, Miller," exclaimed Dr. Burns wrathfully.
"This is an outrage upon a citizen of a free country. You shall stay
right here."
"I'm sorry to discommode you," returned the conductor, "but there's no
use kicking. It's the law of Virginia, and I am bound by it as well as
you. I have already come near losing my place because of not enforcing
it, and I can take no more such chances, since I have a family to
support."
"And my friend has his rights to maintain," returned Dr. Burns with
determination. "There is a vital principle at stake in the matter."
"Really, sir," argued the conductor, who was a man of peace and not fond
of controversy, "there's no use talking--he absolutely cannot ride in
this car."
"How can you prevent it?" asked Dr. Burns, lapsing into the
argumentative stage.
"The law gives me the right to remove him by force. I can call on the
train crew to assist me, or on the other passengers. If I should choose
to put him off the train entirely, in the middle of a swamp, he would
have no redress--the law so provides. If I did not wish to use force, I
could simply switch this car off at the next siding, transfer the white
passengers to another, and leave you and your friend in possession until
you were arrested and fined or imprisoned."
"What he says is absolutely true, doctor," interposed Miller at this
point. "It is the law, and we are powerless to resist it. If we made any
trouble, it would merely delay your journey and imperil a life at the
other end. I'll go into the other car."
"You shall not go alone," said Dr. Burns stoutly, rising in his turn. "A
place that is too good for you is not good enough for me. I will sit
wherever you do."
"I'm sorry again," said the conductor, who had quite recovered his
equanimity, and calmly conscious of his power, could scarcely restrain
an amused smile; "I dislike to interfere, but white passengers are not
permitted to ride in the colored car."
"This is an outrage," declared Dr. Burns, "a d----d outrage! You are
curtailing the rights, not only of colored people, but of white men as
well. I shall sit where I please!"
"I warn you, sir," rejoined the conductor, hardening again, "that the
law will be enforced. The beauty of the system lies in its strict
impartiality--it applies to both races alike."
"And is equally infamous in both cases," declared Dr. Burns. "I shall
immediately take steps"--
"Never mind, doctor," interrupted Miller, soothingly, "it's only for a
little while. I'll reach my destination just as surely in the other car,
and we can't help it, anyway. I'll see you again at Wellington."
Dr. Burns, finding resistance futile, at length acquiesced and made way
for Miller to pass him.
The colored doctor took up his valise and crossed the platform to the
car ahead. It was an old car, with faded upholstery, from which the
stuffing projected here and there through torn places. Apparently the
floor had not been swept for several days. The dust lay thick upon the
window sills, and the water-cooler, from which he essayed to get a
drink, was filled with stale water which had made no recent acquaintance
with ice. There was no other passenger in the car, and Miller occupied
himself in making a rough calculation of what it would cost the Southern
railroads to haul a whole car for every colored passenger. It was
expensive, to say the least; it would be cheaper, and quite as
considerate of their feelings, to make the negroes walk.
The car was conspicuously labeled at either end with large cards,
similar to those in the other car, except that they bore the word
"Colored" in black letters upon a white background. The author of this
piece of legislation had contrived, with an ingenuity worthy of a better
cause, that not merely should the passengers be separated by the color
line, but that the reason for this division should be kept constantly in
mind. Lest a white man should forget that he was white,--not a very
likely contingency,--these cards would keep him constantly admonished of
the fact; should a colored person endeavor, for a moment, to lose sight
of his disability, these staring signs would remind him continually that
between him and the rest of mankind not of his own color, there was by
law a great gulf fixed.
Having composed himself, Miller had opened a newspaper, and was deep in
an editorial which set forth in glowing language the inestimable
advantages which would follow to certain recently acquired islands by
the introduction of American liberty, when the rear door of the car
opened to give entrance to Captain George McBane, who took a seat near
the door and lit a cigar. Miller knew him quite well by sight and by
reputation, and detested him as heartily. He represented the aggressive,
offensive element among the white people of the New South, who made it
hard for a negro to maintain his self-respect or to enjoy even the
rights conceded to colored men by Southern laws. McBane had undoubtedly
identified him to the conductor in the other car. Miller had no desire
to thrust himself upon the society of white people, which, indeed, to
one who had traveled so much and so far, was no novelty; but he very
naturally resented being at this late day--the law had been in operation
only a few months--branded and tagged and set apart from the rest of
mankind upon the public highways, like an unclean thing. Nevertheless,
he preferred even this to the exclusive society of Captain George
McBane.
"Porter," he demanded of the colored train attaché who passed through
the car a moment later, "is this a smoking car for white men?"
"No, suh," replied the porter, "but they comes in here sometimes, when
they ain' no cullud ladies on the kyar."
"Well, I have paid first-class fare, and I object to that man's smoking
in here. You tell him to go out."
"I'll tell the conductor, suh," returned the porter in a low tone. "I
'd jus' as soon talk ter the devil as ter that man."
The white man had spread himself over two seats, and was smoking
vigorously, from time to time spitting carelessly in the aisle, when the
conductor entered the compartment.
"Captain," said Miller, "this car is plainly marked 'Colored.' I have
paid first-class fare, and I object to riding in a smoking car."
"All right," returned the conductor, frowning irritably. "I'll speak to
him."
He walked over to the white passenger, with whom he was evidently
acquainted, since he addressed him by name.
"Captain McBane," he said, "it's against the law for you to ride in the
nigger car."
"Who are you talkin' to?" returned the other. "I'll ride where I damn
please."
"Yes, sir, but the colored passenger objects. I'm afraid I'll have to
ask you to go into the smoking-car."
"The hell you say!" rejoined McBane. "I'll leave this car when I get
good and ready, and that won't be till I've finished this cigar. See?"
He was as good as his word. The conductor escaped from the car before
Miller had time for further expostulation. Finally McBane, having thrown
the stump of his cigar into the aisle and added to the floor a finishing
touch in the way of expectoration, rose and went back into the white
car.
Left alone in his questionable glory, Miller buried himself again in his
newspaper, from which he did not look up until the engine stopped at a
tank station to take water.
As the train came to a standstill, a huge negro, covered thickly with
dust, crawled off one of the rear trucks unobserved, and ran round the
rear end of the car to a watering-trough by a neighboring well. Moved
either by extreme thirst or by the fear that his time might be too short
to permit him to draw a bucket of water, he threw himself down by the
trough, drank long and deep, and plunging his head into the water, shook
himself like a wet dog, and crept furtively back to his dangerous perch.
Miller, who had seen this man from the car window, had noticed a very
singular thing. As the dusty tramp passed the rear coach, he cast toward
it a glance of intense ferocity. Up to that moment the man's face, which
Miller had recognized under its grimy coating, had been that of an
ordinarily good-natured, somewhat reckless, pleasure-loving negro, at
present rather the worse for wear. The change that now came over it
suggested a concentrated hatred almost uncanny in its murderousness.
With awakened curiosity Miller followed the direction of the negro's
glance, and saw that it rested upon a window where Captain McBane sat
looking out. When Miller looked back, the negro had disappeared.
At the next station a Chinaman, of the ordinary laundry type, boarded
the train, and took his seat in the white car without objection. At
another point a colored nurse found a place with her mistress.
"White people," said Miller to himself, who had seen these passengers
from the window, "do not object to the negro as a servant. As the
traditional negro,--the servant,--he is welcomed; as an equal, he is
repudiated."
Miller was something of a philosopher. He had long ago had the
conclusion forced upon him that an educated man of his race, in order to
live comfortably in the United States, must be either a philosopher or
a fool; and since he wished to be happy, and was not exactly a fool, he
had cultivated philosophy. By and by he saw a white man, with a dog,
enter the rear coach. Miller wondered whether the dog would be allowed
to ride with his master, and if not, what disposition would be made of
him. He was a handsome dog, and Miller, who was fond of animals, would
not have objected to the company of a dog, as a dog. He was nevertheless
conscious of a queer sensation when he saw the porter take the dog by
the collar and start in his own direction, and felt consciously relieved
when the canine passenger was taken on past him into the baggage-car
ahead. Miller's hand was hanging over the arm of his seat, and the dog,
an intelligent shepherd, licked it as he passed. Miller was not entirely
sure that he would not have liked the porter to leave the dog there; he
was a friendly dog, and seemed inclined to be sociable.
Toward evening the train drew up at a station where quite a party of
farm laborers, fresh from their daily toil, swarmed out from the
conspicuously labeled colored waiting-room, and into the car with
Miller. They were a jolly, good-natured crowd, and, free from the
embarrassing presence of white people, proceeded to enjoy themselves
after their own fashion. Here an amorous fellow sat with his arm around
a buxom girl's waist. A musically inclined individual--his talents did
not go far beyond inclination--produced a mouth-organ and struck up a
tune, to which a limber-legged boy danced in the aisle. They were noisy,
loquacious, happy, dirty, and malodorous. For a while Miller was amused
and pleased. They were his people, and he felt a certain expansive
warmth toward them in spite of their obvious shortcomings. By and by,
however, the air became too close, and he went out upon the platform.
For the sake of the democratic ideal, which meant so much to his race,
he might have endured the affliction. He could easily imagine that
people of refinement, with the power in their hands, might be tempted to
strain the democratic ideal in order to avoid such contact; but
personally, and apart from the mere matter of racial sympathy, these
people were just as offensive to him as to the whites in the other end
of the train. Surely, if a classification of passengers on trains was at
all desirable, it might be made upon some more logical and considerate
basis than a mere arbitrary, tactless, and, by the very nature of
things, brutal drawing of a color line. It was a veritable bed of
Procrustes, this standard which the whites had set for the negroes.
Those who grew above it must have their heads cut off, figuratively
speaking,--must be forced back to the level assigned to their race;
those who fell beneath the standard set had their necks stretched,
literally enough, as the ghastly record in the daily papers gave
conclusive evidence.
Miller breathed more freely when the lively crowd got off at the next
station, after a short ride. Moreover, he had a light heart, a
conscience void of offense, and was only thirty years old. His
philosophy had become somewhat jaded on this journey, but he pulled it
together for a final effort. Was it not, after all, a wise provision of
nature that had given to a race, destined to a long servitude and a slow
emergence therefrom, a cheerfulness of spirit which enabled them to
catch pleasure on the wing, and endure with equanimity the ills that
seemed inevitable? The ability to live and thrive under adverse
circumstances is the surest guaranty of the future. The race which at
the last shall inherit the earth--the residuary legatee of
civilization--will be the race which remains longest upon it. The negro
was here before the Anglo-Saxon was evolved, and his thick lips and
heavy-lidded eyes looked out from the inscrutable face of the Sphinx
across the sands of Egypt while yet the ancestors of those who now
oppress him were living in caves, practicing human sacrifice, and
painting themselves with woad--and the negro is here yet.
"'Blessed are the meek,'" quoted Miller at the end of these consoling
reflections, "'for they shall inherit the earth.' If this be true, the
negro may yet come into his estate, for meekness seems to be set apart
as his portion."
The journey came to an end just as the sun had sunk into the west.
Simultaneously with Miller's exit from the train, a great black figure
crawled off the trucks of the rear car, on the side opposite the station
platform. Stretching and shaking himself with a free gesture, the black
man, seeing himself unobserved, moved somewhat stiffly round the end of
the car to the station platform.
"'Fo de Lawd!" he muttered, "ef I hadn' had a cha'm' life, I'd 'a'
never got here on dat ticket, an' dat's a fac'--it sho' am! I kind er
'lowed I wuz gone a dozen times, ez it wuz. But I got my job ter do in
dis worl', an' I knows I ain' gwine ter die 'tel I've 'complished it. I
jes' want one mo' look at dat man, an' den I'll haf ter git somethin'
ter eat; fer two raw turnips in twelve hours is slim pickin's fer a man
er my size!"