at he knows his business. What I mean
by watching an engine is, every few minutes let your eye wander over the
engine and you will be surprised to see how quickly you will detect
anything out of place. So when I see an engineer watching his engine
closely while running, I am most certain to see another commendable
feature in a good engineer, and that is, when he stops his engine he
will pick up a greasy rag and go over his engine carefully, wiping every
working part, watching or looking carefully at every point that he
touches. If a nut is working loose he finds it, if a bearing is hot he
finds it. If any part of his engine has been cutting, he finds it. He
picked up, a greasy rag instead of a wrench, for the engineer that
understands his business and attends to it never picks up a wrench
unless he has something to do with it. The good engineer took a greasy
rag and while he was using it to clean his engine, he was at the same
time carefully examining every part. His main object was to see that
everything was all right. If he had found a nut loose or any part out
of place, then he would have taken his wrench, for he had use for it.

Now what a contrast there is between this engineer and a poor one, and
unfortunately there are hundreds of poor engineers running portable and
traction engines. You will find a poor engineer very willing to talk.
This is bad habit number one. He cannot talk and have his mind on his
work. Beginners must not forget this. When I tell you how to fire an
engine you will understand how important it is, The poor engineer is
very apt to ask an outsider to stay at his engine while he goes to the
separator to talk. This is bad habit number two. Even if the outsider
is a good engineer, he does not know whether the pump is throwing more
water than is being used or whether it is throwing less. He can only
ascertain this by watching the column of water in the glass, and he
hardly knows whether to throw in fuel or not. He don't want the steam
to go down and he don't know at what pressure the pop valve will blow
off. There may be a box or journal that has been giving the engineer
trouble and the outsider knows nothing about it. There are a dozen
other good reasons why bad habit number two is very bad.

If you will watch the poor engineer when he stops his engine, he will,
if he does anything, pick up a wrench, go around to the wrist pin,
strike the key a little crack, draw a nut or peck awa