Summary

The narrator, now 17, takes the train to Georgia and is disheartened by the less refined, more primitive and dirty look of the South as compared to Connecticut. On the train, he meets a young porter who refers him to a boarding house where he can stay a few nights before school begins. Both the house and the proprietor are similarly dingy which the narrator finds distasteful.

The porter leads them to get dinner that evening. As they walk through the streets of Atlanta, the narrator sees for the first time Black people in large numbers. The porter informs him these groups are of the lower classes. Disgusted by nearly every characteristic of this group, the narrator finds only their dialect interesting. He is impressed by their unrestrained laughter and voices, believing their humor is what saved them from going “the way of the Indian...