e
surrounding ones, on which I held with a firm grasp, and did the car no
service in some respects. I was strong and muscular, and the seats were
not then so firmly attached or of as solid make as now. The result was
that Stephen A. Chase, superintendent of the road, ordered all passenger
trains to pass through Lynn, where I then lived, without stopping. This
was a great inconvenience to the people, large numbers of whom did
business in Boston, and at other points of the road. Led on, however, by
James N. Buffum, Jonathon Buffum, Christopher Robinson, William Bassett,
and others, the people of Lynn stood bravely by me, and denounced the
railway management in emphatic terms. Mr. Chase made reply that a
railroad corporation was neither a religious nor a reformatory body; and
that the road was run for the accommodation of the public; and that it
required the exclusion of the coloured people from its cars. With an air
of triumph he told us that we ought not to expect a railroad company to
be better than the Evangelical Church, and that until the churches
abolished the "negro pew," we ought not to expect the railroad company to
abolish the negro car. This argument was certainly good enough as
against the Church, but good for nothing as against the demands of
justice and equity. My old and dear friend, J. N. Buffum, made a point
against the company that they "often allowed dogs and monkeys to ride in
first-class cars, and yet excluded a man like Frederick Douglass!" In a
very few years this barbarous practice was put away, and I think there
have been no instances of such exclusion during the past thirty years;
and coloured people now, everywhere in New England, ride upon equal terms
with other passengers.

--_Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_.

QUITE TOO CLEVER

The elder Dumas was at the railway station, just starting to join his
yacht at Marseilles. Several friends had accompanied him, to say
good-bye. Suddenly he was informed that he had a hundred and fifty
kilogrammes excess of luggage. "Ho, ho!" cried Dumas. "How many
kilogrammes are allowed?" "Thirty for each person," was the reply.
Silently he made a mental calculation, and then in a tone of triumph bade
his secretary take places for five. "In that way," he explained, "we
shall have no excess."

A DIFFICULTY SOLVED.

Among the improvements that have been carried out at Windsor during the
autumn,