I.
It was one of those blistering July afternoons that sometimes descend upon people who have traveled a long way in the palatial discomfort of a Pullman, only to find themselves completing the last leg of their journey amid the democratic rattle-ty-bang of an antique, plush-lined day-coach. Several cars in advance, the energetic branch line locomotive was belching clouds of smoke and whistling shrilly at each spralling crossroad; while within the day-coach itself, a faded sign proclaimed that persons of color would only be tolerated on the last three seats of each car, and thus localized the scene to one of those down at the heel Southern railroads that have not yet recovered from the Civil War.
The greater part of the passengers were negroes, prosperously dressed, and covertly taking pains to be as obnoxious as possible to the little group of whites entrenched in a compact and strategic position among the last three seats of the car. Of the latter, one was a grey-haired gentlewoman of the old South, her expression combining with the pride of blood a certain indefinable mellow sweetness. A blue-eyed child of six sat by her side, and perhaps he too was conscious of his descent, but he kept his nose glued close to the window for all that. Behind these two, in a little compartment formed by turning two seats together, sat three ruddy farm girls in uncomfortable attitudes of acute self-consciousness. They had been giggling and overflowing with spirits during most of the trip, but the appearance of a young man in the seat opposite, at the last junction, had reduced their exuberance and heightened their curiosity. For, on one side of the neatly strapped suitcase which he had erected beside him as a sort of barrier from the negroes, appeared the legend, “P. R. Melton, N. Y. C.”