NEXT morning I took an early train for Wheeling, which city I desired to visit on my westward way. On this occasion, about twelve minutes before the train started, two men came in, and, desiring to sit together and finding no seat wholly vacant, one of them had the incredible, the unparalleled, the unexampled, the unheard-of audacity to ask me to move and sit with another person—a thing I have refused to do even to accommodate a lady. It was not yet quite light in the car, as the sun was not up, and I pointed to my crutch, that stood leaning against the back of the seat in front of me, and stated that I had been badly shot in the knee the previous night, in a saloon difficulty, and that it was impossible for me to move with any sort of comfort or ease. Moreover, I observed, that my uncle was to accompany me on my journey, to take care of me, that he would of course occupy the seat with me, and that he had just gone to a neighboring saloon to get me a glass of ale and hand it in at the window. Otherwise, I said, I should accommodate them by moving to any part of the car they might desire, and take pleasure in it. Taking all I said for the truth,—and thus making a wholesale mistake—they turned and went to the rear end of the car, where they urgently requested a respectable-looking negro passenger to get up and let them have his seat. But he knew his rights, and, knowing, durst maintain; and he maintained them after this manner: “Guess not.” “O, come, now,” argued one of the two passengers; “you might as well. You’ll be just as comfortable some——” “Well, now, I guess I won’t leab dis yer, by golly!” “You might have to,” suggested one of the Caucasians. “Hab to? Like to see de man——” “For half-a-cent I’d move you!” The darkey was now very much “riled,” and being, besides, a little drunk, and naturally ill-natured and habitually profane in his language, he railed out thus: “No, I’ll be (profanity) if you does! (Profanity) my heart, if I jis’ didn’ fight fur dis (profanity) country, and I’ll be (profanity, profanity, profanitied) if I ain’t as good as any oder (profanity) man! I know what my rights is! I does! I’ll be (profanity, profanitied) if I don’t! (Profanity, profanity, profanity, profanity)——” “Look here!” exclaimed the conductor, who had just entered the car, and was adjusting the bell-cord; “what the (here he made a concise and pointed allusion to a dark personage who wears a tail with a dart on the end of it, and carries off bad boys that won’t mind their mothers and who run off and play base ball when sent to school) do you mean? What are you cursing that way for? Don’t you see there are ladies in the car——” “Dey wants my seat, and——” “Well, they havn’t got it, have they? You shall keep your seat, if you want to. No one is going to take it from you! Now, another word out of your black head, and I’ll split it for you, and throw it out of the window, a piece at a time!”