d first-class fare, did not even meet with that measure of
success; the learned judge, a Federal judge by the way, held that the
plaintiff's rights had been invaded, and that he had suffered
humiliation at the hands of the defendant company, but that "the
humiliation was not sufficient to entitle him to damages." And the
learned judge dismissed the action without costs to either party.

Having thus ascertained what constitutes a white man, the good citizen
may be curious to know what steps have been taken to preserve the purity
of the white race. Nature, by some unaccountable oversight having to
some extent neglected a matter so important to the future prosperity and
progress of mankind. The marriage laws referred to here are in active
operation, and cases under them are by no means infrequent. Indeed,
instead of being behind the age, the marriage laws in the Southern
States are in advance of public opinion; for very rarely will a Southern
community stop to figure on the pedigree of the contracting parties to a
marriage where one is white and the other is known to have any strain of
Negro blood.

In Virginia, under the title "Offenses against Morality," the law
provides that "any white person who shall intermarry with a Negro shall
be confined in jail not more than one year and fined not exceeding one
hundred dollars." In a marginal note on the statute-book, attention is
called to the fact that "a similar penalty is not imposed on the
Negro"--a stretch of magnanimity to which the laws of other states are
strangers. A person who performs the ceremony of marriage in such a case
is fined two hundred dollars, one-half of which goes to the informer.

In Maryland, a minister who performs the ceremony of marriage between a
Negro and a white person is liable to a fine of one hundred dollars.

In Mississippi, code of 1880, it is provided that "the marriage of a
white person to a Negro or mulatto or person who shall have one-fourth
or more of Negro blood, shall be unlawful"; and as this prohibition does
not seem sufficiently emphatic, it is further declared to be "incestuous
and void," and is punished by the same penalty prescribed for marriage
within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity.

But it is Georgia, the _alma genetrix_ of the chain-gang, which merits
the questionable distinction of having the harshest set of color laws.
By the law of Georgia the term "person of color" is defined to mean "all
such as have an admixtu