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.
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