[Illustration: "Yes, Cissie, I understand now"] BIRTHRIGHT A NOVEL BY T.S. STRIBLING Illustrated by F. Luis Mora 1922 TO MY MOTHER AMELIA WAITS STRIBLING LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "Yes, Cissie, I understand now" Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy The old gentleman turned around at last "You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered "Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to Niggertown" The bridal couple embarked for Cairo BIRTHRIGHT CHAPTER I At Cairo, Illinois, the Pullman-car conductor asked Peter Siner to take his suitcase and traveling-bag and pass forward into the Jim Crow car. The request came as a sort of surprise to the negro. During Peter Siner's four years in Harvard the segregation of black folk on Southern railroads had become blurred and reminiscent in his mind; now it was fetched back into the sharp distinction of the present instant. With a certain sense of strangeness, Siner picked up his bags, and saw his own form, in the car mirrors, walking down the length of the sleeper. He moved on through the dining-car, where a few hours before he had had dinner and talked with two white men, one an Oregon apple-grower, the other a Wisconsin paper-manufacturer. The Wisconsin man had furnished cigars, and the three had sat and smoked in the drawing-room, indeed, had discussed this very point; and now it was upon him. At the door of the dining-car stood the porter of his Pullman, a negro like himself, and Peter mechanically gave him fifty cents. The porter accepted it silently, without offering the amenities of his whisk-broom and shoe-brush, and Peter passed on forward. Beyond the dining-car and Pullmans stretched twelve day-coaches filled with less-opulent white travelers in all degrees of sleepiness and dishabille from having sat up all night. The thirteenth coach was the Jim Crow car. Framed in a conspicuous place beside the entrance of the car was a copy of the Kentucky state ordinance setting this coach apart from the remainder of the train for the purposes therein provided.