I sat down with the porter at one of the tables, but was not hungry enough to eat with any relish what was put before me.  The food was not badly cooked; but the iron knives and forks needed to be scrubbed, the plates and dishes and glasses needed to be washed and well dried.  I minced over what I took on my plate while my companion ate.  When we finished, we paid the waiter twenty cents each and went out.  We walked around until the lights of the city were lit.  Then the porter said that he must get to bed and have some rest, as he had not had six hours’ sleep since he left Jersey City.  I went back to our lodging house with him.

When I awoke in the morning, there were, besides my new-found friend, two other men in the room, asleep in the double bed.  I got up and dressed myself very quietly, so as not to awake anyone.  I then drew from under the pillow my precious roll of greenbacks, took out a ten-dollar bill, and, very softly unlocking my trunk, put the remainder, about three hundred dollars, in the inside pocket of a coat near the bottom, glad of the opportunity to put it unobserved in a place of safety.  When I had carefully locked my trunk, I tiptoed toward the door with the intention of going out to look for a decent restaurant where I might get something fit to eat.  As I was easing the door open, my porter friend said with a yawn:  “Hello!  You’re going out?” I answered him:  “Yes.”  “Oh!” he yawned again, “I guess I’ve had enough sleep; wait a minute, I’ll go with you.”  For the instant his friendship bored and embarrassed me.  I had visions of another meal in the greasy restaurant of the day before.  He must have divined my thoughts, for he went on to say:  “I know a woman across town who takes a few boarders; I think we can go over there and get a good breakfast.”  With a feeling of mingled fears and doubts regarding what the breakfast might be, I waited until he had dressed himself.

When I saw the neat appearance of the cottage we entered, my fears vanished, and when I saw the woman who kept it, my doubts followed the same course.  Scrupulously clean, in a spotless white apron and colored head-handkerchief, her round face beaming with motherly kindness, she was picturesquely beautiful.  She impressed me as one broad expanse of happiness and good nature.  In a few minutes she was addressing me as “chile” and “honey.”  She made me feel as though I should like to lay my head on her capacious bosom and go to sleep.

And the breakfast, simple as it was, I could not have had at any restaurant in Atlanta at any price.  There was fried chicken, as it is fried only in the South, hominy boiled to the consistency where it could be eaten with a fork, and biscuits so light and flaky that a fellow with any appetite at all would have no difficulty in disposing of eight or ten.  When I had finished, I felt that I had experienced the realization of, at least, one of my dreams of Southern life.