ished in Prussia until 1807, and in Austria until 1848. Even here in America white persons were slaves. There were Irish slaves in New England."

"Irish slaves in New England?" echoed the other in scornful surprise.

"Yes," resumed Dixon, "Irish men and women were slaves in New England, being sold like black slaves and treated not a whit better. Many of the most socially prominent in America have slave ancestors; for instance, according to Professor Cigrand, Grover Cleveland's great-grandfather, Richard Falley, was an Irish slave in Connecticut. There were also white slaves in Virginia. Black and white slaves used to work together in the fields in Barbadoes. Indeed, it would be quite possible to find white persons living in this country who were born in a condition just one remove from actual slavery, such having come from Russia, where serfdom was abolished in 1863. Hence you see, sir, the white man has no special advantage over the black in the matter of slavery." Dixon paused a moment, then added: “But I should think that the stigma attached to slavery would be more justly placed on the descendants of slaveholders than on the offspring of slaves. Is it not the kidnapper, and not the kidnapped, who is the odious one? With all deference to your parentage, my opinion is that slaveholders were parasites of the most vicious kind."

The passenger seemed much perturbed. He arose, paced the smoker twice, then resumed his seat. After a few moments of reflection he insisted:

"But the Negro, himself, acknowledges his racial inferiority. Just look how he bleaches his skin, straightens his hair, and uses other devices to appear like the white man! Isn't that a sign of inferiority? Imitation is acknowledgment of superiority. Do you see any other race thus imitating the looks of the white man? I can't imagine a more comical sight than a Negro dandy with his hair all ironed out until it looks like the quills upon

the fretful porcupine. Imagine a white man darkening himself to look like a Negro !" Then he added, sneeringly, "The Negro is ashamed of himself. If he believes himself the equal of the white man, his actions certainly do not show it."

Dixon started. He had never looked at this matter in this light before, so he pondered his reply.

The passenger noted his silence with a smile of satisfaction.

Dixon now found his response.

"Yes, these Negroes who 'doctor' themselves to appear white would appear to acknowledge inferiority. I have always held that one's hair or color of skin is as perfect as nature can make them, so perfect that to tamper with either is the surest way of spoiling them eventually."

"So much the worse for him, then," retorted the passenger, sarcastically, "that he should try to ape a race below him. He is just inferior, that's all, and the best proof is that he acknowledges it himself. When a man acknowledges his faults, don't you believe him?"

"Indeed, sir," retorted Dixon, "it is clearly the fault of the average white that these so-called Negroes should try to be other than they are. In a country where a drop of Negro blood, more or less visible, and a 'kink,' more or less pronounced, in the hair, may altogether change the current of one's life, what can you expect?"

Dixon paused an instant, then continued: "I will give you an instance. Two brothers, intimately known to me, arrived in New York from abroad. The hair of one brother did not indicate Negro extraction, that of the other did. The silky-haired one obtained a position commensurate with his ability. Incidentally, he went South and married a white woman. The other, the better educated and more gentlemanly of the two, too manly for subterfuge, after fruitless endeavor, had to

take a porter's job. He finally went back home in disgust."

Dixon added reflectively, "Also do not forget that if certain Negroes iron their curly hair, to make it straight, certain whites also iron their straight hair to make it curly. The whites, also, by bleaching their complexion and hair, wearing false hair, and the like, make a false show too."

The passenger shifted in his seat uncomfortably. After a few moments he responded, a shade less confidently and somewhat more quietly, "What about this, then the Negro shows no originality, not even so far as contemptuous epithets are concerned. The white man calls the Negro 'nigger' and yet the Negro accepts it even to the length of calling himself so. Fancy a white man calling himself by a name given to him by Negroes! The Negro is a mimic. He has the same amount of reasoning power as a poll parrot."

"I am sorry to say, sir," admitted Dixon, "that a great number of uneducated Negroes, also a goodly number of those with mere book-learning, do act in a manner to warrant your statement. The habit that far too many Negroes have of applying to themselves those objectionable epithets bestowed upon them by their white con-temners can not be too strongly condemned. And yet the surest way of nullifying a nickname is to call yourself by it. Anyway, I have been to South America and the Negroes there would never think of addressing themselves thus. Indeed, even a full-blooded Brazilian Negro feels insulted if called a Negro. He wishes to be known solely by his national patronymic."

"Well, how can you account for that?" demanded the passenger, curiously, off his guard for the moment.

"In Brazil," explained Dixon, "where slavery existed as late as 1888, the Negro is taught not only to regard himself the equal of the white man, but he is given an opportunity to prove it. There is no walk of Brazilian

life, official or unofficial, where he is not welcome and to which he has not aspired. I have been credibly informed that more than one Brazilian president has had Negro blood in his veins. In the United States, on the other hand, it does appear as if everything possible is done to humble the so-called Negro-to suppress his self-respect. There ought to be small wonder, then, if many Negroes do not show sufficient manly dignity, and many others, without weighing the purport, try to appear white, an act which, after all, is just about as much an admission of inferiority as when a white man blisters himself in the sun in an endeavor to appear, no doubt, like the bronzed heroes of the story books."

The passenger did not respond. He appeared to be busily engaged in studying the inlaid woodwork. Dixon then added with assumed gravity:

"I must concede, however, sir, that the average Negro acknowledges his inferiority tacitly and often by speech."

The passenger straightened up instantly. He smiled triumphantly, and replied with an air of finality, "Well, that settles the argument. I knew you would finally come to the truth."

"But, in this instance," Dixon queried, archly, "might not an acknowledgment of inferiority prove a certain superiority?"

"Inferiority proving superiority? What are you saying, anyway?"

"Doesn't the case of the sexes explain this seeming paradox? The average male human, as you will admit, is egotistic. The more that woman, the weaker, humors this trait, the better she serves her own interest; similarly, the average white man's weak point is his color egotism, and the more the Negro humors this failing, the more he serves his own interest. The greater the selfinterest of woman the more credulous she is to tales of masculine prowess; the greater the self-interest of the Negro the more he flatters the white man's egotism.

Now, sir, which is cleverer, the fooled or the one who fools?"

The other did not reply.

Dixon continued: "I'll give you an illustration. A friend of mine, a doctor, told me he was one day in a barroom in Chicago when a man whom he instantly recognized as a Southerner, by his dress and manner, entered. Lounging in a corner was a Negro, one of those human beings who elect to live by their wits. No sooner had the Southerner ordered his drink that the Negro walked up and, looking at him admiringly, effused, 'What a pretty white man! Say, boss, yo' is from Missourah, ain't yo'?'

"Yes,' confirmed the other, much flattered at this open admiration, 'and wheh ah yo' from?'

""Ah, boss, how can yo' ask me dat?' said the Negro in mock indignation, eagerly eyeing the white man's glass. Then he wheedled, 'Say, boss, I'll have a "gin an' rass," too' (raspberry wine and gin, a favorite drink among certain classes in Missouri). The Negro had the drink, and the white man in paying pulled out a large roll of bills. The sight of so much money fired the Negro's eloquence. He redoubled his flatteries, telling his host how the Northern 'niggers' were 'biggity' and how they thought themselves as good as white folks, and when he had his victim flattered to the seventh heaven of delight, he sprang a hard luck story. The result was several more 'gin-rasses' and a dollar.”

Dixon related the incident in a breezy manner, but the passenger failed to see any humor in it.

"From what you say," he objected coldly, "the white man must have been very ignorant. And then might not a Negro permit himself to be thus similarly flattered by a white man?"

"Possibly. But this story, and similar ones I could tell you, prove that acknowledgment of inferiority often means self-interest. The case of Booker T. Wash