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.