And so the case stands now. The government is considering the matter. Doubtless the Perkins Siren will, in the end, be adopted--with modifications and restrictions. Hannibal Perkins is pondering over the question of why people get so maddeningly tired of a piece of music, from some favorite of the operas down to the latest bit of "rag-time." They do not get tired of bread and beefsteak! Is the palate wiser than the ear? Even Hannibal Perkins cannot answer that question. Human nature is odd. CHAPTER XI THE PORTER'S STORY From the beginning of the train's delay the porter of the sleeping car had attracted attention unostentatiously. This expression perhaps best describes the man's demeanor. He was, apparently, not much over thirty years of age, and a white man, but for that indefinable something which manifests itself in the bearing of a human being who, by unfortunate stress of circumstances, is fighting the world at a disadvantage. He was a blonde man, six feet in height. There was to his bearing a certain dignity. Yet, he was the porter of the car! It followed, as a practical certainty, that he was of African descent, however much of his blood had come in the intermingling with a preponderence in favor of the Anglo-Saxon. He looked like a Viking, one of those who sometimes sailed down to Africa, after ravaging the Seine Valley, and taking toll of the monasteries and castles of the Spanish Peninsula en route,--but certainly not like one whose real ancestors, those who made the man, could have been African. The Colonel had recognized the fact that this big blonde man was one of Nature's mistakes in production under too sinister surroundings, and saw, too, that there was a story which might be told readily and impulsively and forcefully, and, perhaps most interestingly, under some momentum of the hour. He decided this to be the psychological moment. "Will you not give us a story, now, John?" he said--he had learned the porter's name the day before, but half hesitated at the familiarity--"I've a fancy you may have more to tell than any of the rest of us. Will you let us know what it is?" The porter glanced at him curiously but not in any protesting way. It could be seen that he recognized in the other man, a sympathizing human being and he rose to the occasion. "I will tell you the story," he said, slowly, "though, really, save as possibly amusing somebody for the moment, I scarcely see the object, but it may be that it will afford me a little relief personally. Come to think of it, I don't know that I've ever had a chance to tell my story to intelligent human beings under anything like fair auspices. I'm going to tell it simply and truly. I'll leave the verdict to you. Your verdict cannot help me any, for you are as weak as I am in this case, but this is the story: HIS PROBLEM Is it well for me that I am a product of a University, that I am what I am?