Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1896 — Good for the Colored Porters. [ARTICLE]

Good for the Colored Porters.

The New York Tribune tells an excellent story of the kindness of some sleeping car porters, as gathered from the lips of a young Englishwoman whose husband was serlobsly ill, and who found herself suddenly obliged to undertake a twenty-four-hottr railway journey, with a baby only two months old, and with no one to assist her in the care of it. I didn’t know how baby would take to traveling, and the thought of his crying all night in the sleeping car was simply maddening. We started at 6 o’clock, and for two hours baby was quiet. But then he became restless, and soon he began to cry; I did all I could, but he kept it up. - The meh In the car looked at us ruefully, as if expecting a sleepless night, and I finally began to cry myself. I know it was foolish, but alarm for my husband and the trouble with baby were too much for me. There were three women in the car,’ one elderly and the others young, but none of them offered me even a word of sympathy. But the negro porters were as kind and good as they could be. I didn’t know much about negroes, and from the newspapers I had an Idea that the porters on sleeping ears were greedy and soulless. These certainly were not. The one on my car may have been animated by a desire to get a tip, but all the others who passed stopped to speak to me and to ask If they could do anything for baby. They got me lumps of sugar and warmed the milk, and spoke so cheeringly that I felt much relieved. Fortunately baby quieted down in an hour or two, and slept well all night. Now my heart is warm for the negro race, and especially for sleeping car porters.