entered the car, I found only a couple of men there; but in a
half-hour there were half a dozen or more. From the general
conversation I learned that a fat Jewish-looking man was a cigar
manufacturer, and was experimenting in growing Havana tobacco in
Florida; that a slender bespectacled young man was from Ohio and
a professor in some State institution in Alabama; that a
white-mustached, well-dressed man was an old Union soldier who had
fought through the Civil War; and that a tall, raw-boned, red-faced
man, who seemed bent on leaving nobody in ignorance of the fact that
he was from Texas, was a cotton planter.

In the North men may ride together for hours in a "smoker" and unless
they are acquainted with each other never exchange a word; in the
South men thrown together in such manner are friends in fifteen
minutes. There is always present a warm-hearted cordiality which will
melt down the most frigid reserve. It may be because Southerners are
very much like Frenchmen in that they must talk; and not only must
they talk, but they must express their opinions.

The talk in the car was for a while miscellaneous--on the weather,
crops, business prospects; the old Union soldier had invested capital
in Atlanta, and he predicted that that city would soon be one of the
greatest in the country. Finally the conversation drifted to politics;
then, as a natural sequence, turned upon the Negro question.

In the discussion of the race question the diplomacy of the Jew was
something to be admired; he had the faculty of agreeing with everybody
without losing his allegiance to any side. He knew that to sanction
Negro oppression would be to sanction Jewish oppression and would
expose him to a shot along that line from the old soldier, who stood