One of these, who
had been on the car since it had left New York, rose from his seat upon
perceiving the other's glance, and came down the aisle.
"How do you do, Dr. Burns?" he said, stopping beside the seat of the
Philadelphia passenger.
The gentleman looked up at the speaker with an air of surprise, which,
after the first keen, incisive glance, gave place to an expression of
cordial recognition.
"Why, it's Miller!" he exclaimed, rising and giving the other his hand,
"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.
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