On the train I had talked with one of the Pullman car porters, a bright young fellow who was himself a student, and told him that I was going to Atlanta to attend school.  I had also asked him to tell me where I might stop for a day or two until the University opened.  He said I might go with him to the place where he stopped during his “lay-overs” in Atlanta.  I gladly accepted his offer and went with him along one of those muddy streets until we came to a rather rickety looking frame house, which we entered.  The proprietor of the house was a big, fat, greasy-looking brown-skin man.  When I asked him if he could give me accommodations, he wanted to know how long I would stay.  I told him perhaps two days, not more than three.  In reply he said:  “Oh, dat’s all right den,” at the same time leading the way up a pair of creaky stairs.  I followed him and the porter to a room, the door of which the proprietor opened while continuing, it seemed, his remark, “Oh, dat’s all right den,” by adding:  “You kin sleep in dat cot in de corner der.  Fifty cents, please.”  The porter interrupted by saying:  “You needn’t collect from him now, he’s got a trunk.”  This seemed to satisfy the man, and he went down, leaving me and my porter friend in the room.  I glanced around the apartment and saw that it contained a double bed and two cots, two wash-stands, three chairs, and a time-worn bureau, with a looking-glass that would have made Adonis appear hideous.  I looked at the cot in which I was to sleep and suspected, not without good reasons, that I should not be the first to use the sheets and pillow-case since they had last come from the wash.  When I thought of the clean, tidy, comfortable surroundings in which I had been reared, a wave of homesickness swept over me that made me feel faint.  Had it not been for the presence of my companion, and that I knew this much of his history—­that he was not yet quite twenty, just three years older than myself, and that he had been fighting his own way in the world, earning his own living and providing for his own education since he was fourteen—­I should not have been able to stop the tears that were welling up in my eyes.

I asked him why it was that the proprietor of the house seemed unwilling to accommodate me for more than a couple of days.  He informed me that the man ran a lodging house especially for Pullman porters, and, as their stays in town were not longer than one or two nights, it would interfere with his arrangements to have anyone stay longer.  He went on to say:  “You see this room is fixed up to accommodate four men at a time.  Well, by keeping a sort of table of trips, in and out, of the men, and working them like checkers, he can accommodate fifteen or sixteen in each week and generally avoid having an empty bed.  You happen to catch a bed that would have been empty for a couple of nights.”  I asked him where he was going to sleep.  He answered:  “I sleep in that other cot tonight; tomorrow night I go out.”  He went on to tell me that the man who kept the house did not serve meals, and that if I was hungry, we would go out and get something to eat.