nd,
"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 d