ommodious house of one story on wheels. The cost of it would have built
and furnished an industrial school and workshop for a hundred negroes;
but this train was, I dare say, a much more inspiring example of what
they might attain by the higher education. There were half a dozen in the
party besides the Hendersons--Carmen, of course; Mr. Ponsonby, the
English attache; and Mrs. Laflamme, to matronize three New York young
ladies. Margaret and Carmen had never been so far South before.

Is it not agreeable to have sweet charity silver shod? This sumptuous
special train caused as much comment as the errand on which it went. Its
coming was telegraphed from station to station, and crowds everywhere
collected to see it. Brisk reporters boarded it; the newspapers devoted
columns to descriptions of it; editorials glorified it as a signal
example of the progress of the great republic, or moralized on it as a
sign of the luxurious decadence of morals; pointing to Carthage and Rome
and Alexandria in withering sarcasm that made those places sink into
insignificance as corrupters of the world. There were covert allusions to
Cleopatra ensconced in the silken hangings of the boudoir car, and one
reporter went so far as to refer to the luxury of Capua and Baiae, to
their disparagement. All this, however, was felt to add to the glory of
the republic, and it all increased the importance of Henderson. To hear
the exclamations, "That's he!" "That's him!" "That's Henderson!" was to
Margaret in some degree a realization of her ambition; and Carmen
declared that it was for her a sweet thought to be identified with
Cleopatra.

So the Catachoobee University had its splendid new building--as great a
contrast to the shanties from which its pupils came as is the Capitol at
Washington to the huts of a third of its population. If the reader is
curious he may read in the local newspapers of the time glowing accounts
of its "inaugural dedication"; but universities are so common in this
country that it has become a little wearisome to read of ceremonies of
this sort. Mr. Henderson made a modest reply to the barefaced eulogy on
himself, which the president pronounced in the presence of six hundred
young men and women of various colors and invited guests--a eulogy which
no one more thoroughly enjoyed than Carmen. I am sorry to say that she
refused to take the affair seriously.

"I felt for you, Mr. Henderson,"; she said, after the exercises were
over. "