no account was taken of him. The train sped on and the fight continued.
Nor did its violence abate until the train reached the next station,
where the conductor summoned reënforcements and invoked the majesty of
the law in the form of an officer. The affray, from first to last, was
most depressing and gave to the unwilling witness a feeling that
civilization is something of a misnomer and that men are inherently
ferocious.

=Misconceptions.=--More mature reflection, however, served to modify
this judgment, and the application of some philosophy resolved the
distressing combat into a relatively simple proposition. The conductor
and his assistants were fighting for their conception of order, and
their opponents were fighting for their conception of manhood. Reduced
to its primal elements, the fight was the result of a dual
misconception. The conductor was battling to vindicate his conception of
order; the foreigners were battling to vindicate their conception of the
rights of men in a democracy. Neither party to the contest understood
the other, and each one felt himself to be on the defensive. Neither one
would have confessed himself the aggressor, and yet each one was
invading the supposed rights of the other. Judicial consideration could
readily have averted the whole distressing affair.

=Foreign concept of democracy.=--The foreigners had come to our country
with roseate dreams of democracy. To their conception, this is the land
where every man is the equal of every other man; where equal rights and
privileges are vouchsafed to all men without regard to nationality,
position, or possessions; where there is no faintest hint of the caste
system; and where there are no possible lines of demarcation. Their
disillusionment on that train was swift and severe, and the observer
could not but wonder what was their conception of a democracy as they