We skirt the pine-clad shores, chary of men, and know how bitterly winter kisses these lonely shores to fill yon row of beaked ice houses that creep up the hills.  We are sailing due westward and the sun, yet two hours high, is blazoning a fiery glory on the sea that spreads and gleams like some broad, jeweled trail, to where the blue and distant shadow-land lifts its carven front aloft, leaving, as it gropes, shades of shadows beyond.

* * * * *

Why do not those who are scarred in the world’s battle and hurt by its hardness travel to these places of beauty and drown themselves in the utter joy of life?  I asked this once sitting in a Southern home.  Outside the spring of a Georgia February was luring gold to the bushes and languor to the soft air.  Around me sat color in human flesh—­brown that crimsoned readily; dim soft-yellow that escaped description; cream-like duskiness that shadowed to rich tints of autumn leaves.  And yet a suggested journey in the world brought no response.

“I should think you would like to travel,” said the white one.

But no, the thought of a journey seemed to depress them.

Did you ever see a “Jim-Crow” waiting-room?  There are always exceptions, as at Greensboro—­but usually there is no heat in winter and no air in summer; with undisturbed loafers and train hands and broken, disreputable settees; to buy a ticket is torture; you stand and stand and wait and wait until every white person at the “other window” is waited on.  Then the tired agent yells across, because all the tickets and money are over there—­

“What d’ye want?  What?  Where?”

The agent browbeats and contradicts you, hurries and confuses the ignorant, gives many persons the wrong change, compels some to purchase their tickets on the train at a higher price, and sends you and me out on the platform, burning with indignation and hatred!

The “Jim-Crow” car is up next the baggage car and engine.  It stops out beyond the covering in the rain or sun or dust.  Usually there is no step to help you climb on and often the car is a smoker cut in two and you must pass through the white smokers or else they pass through your part, with swagger and noise and stares.  Your compartment is a half or a quarter or an eighth of the oldest car in service on the road.  Unless it happens to be a thorough express, the plush is caked with dirt, the floor is grimy, and the windows dirty.  An impertinent white newsboy occupies two seats at the end of the car and importunes you to the point of rage to buy cheap candy, Coco-Cola, and worthless, if not vulgar, books.  He yells and swaggers, while a continued stream of white men saunters back and forth from the smoker to buy and hear.  The white train crew from the baggage car uses the “Jim-Crow” to lounge in and perform their toilet.  The conductor appropriates two seats for himself and his papers and yells gruffly for your tickets before the train has scarcely started.