is manner was touched with cynicism, and this impression was
confirmed by his reply to our further timid inquiry as to a dining car:

"Where do you gentlemen reckon you're a-goin' to, anyhow?"

Presently we passed through the gate and better understood the nature of
the ticket agent's thoughts. The train consisted of several untidy day
coaches, the first a Jim Crow car, the others for white people. The
negro car was already so full that many of its occupants had to stand in
the aisle, but this did not seem to trouble them, for all were gabbling
happily, and the impression one got, in glancing through the door, was
of many sets of handsome white teeth displayed in as many dark grinning
faces. There are innumerable things for which we cannot envy the negro,
but neither his teeth nor his good nature are among them.

It was Saturday afternoon, and the two or three other cars, though not
overcrowded, were well filled with people from the neighboring mining
towns who were going home after having spent the morning shopping in the
city. Almost all our fellow passengers carried packages, many had
infants with them, and we were struck with the fact that the complexions
of these people suggested a diet of pie--fried pie, if there be such a
thing--that a peculiarly high percentage of them suffered from diseases
of the eye, and that the pervading smell of the car in which we sat was
of oranges, bananas, babies, and overheated adults.

A young mother in the seat in front of us had with her three small
children, the youngest an infant in arms. She was feeding a banana to
the second child, who looked about two years old. Behind us a clean,
capable-looking woman talked in a broad Scottish dialect with another
housewife whose jargon was that of the mountaineers.

The region through which the train presently began to wind its way was
green and hilly, and there were many stops at villages, all of them
mining camps apparently, made up of shabby little cabins scattered
helter-skelter upon the hillsides. In many of the cabin doorways mothers
lingered with their broods watching the train, and on all the station
platforms stood crowds of idlers--men, women, and children, negro and
white--many of the men stamped, by their coal-begrimed faces, their
stained overalls, and the lamps above the visors of their caps, as mine
workers.

After a time my companion and I moved to the exceedingly dirty smoking
room at the end of the car, where we sat a