d never makes a mistake. After a long time he gets a measly
country station, where he does all kinds of work, and he is satisfied.
He goes to work to increase the business of that station, to clean up
around the depot, and please all the customers, as though he was going
to live there all his life. He never thinks he is going to be a high
official, but just makes the best of the present. Some day he is awfully
surprised to be given a better station, and he hates to leave, and maybe
sheds a tear as he parts with the friends he has made there. But he goes
to his new place and improves it, and gets in with a new, pushing class
of people, and begins to grow. He maybe works there ten years, and his
work shows so the officials recognize it, and he never makes a mistake
in his telegraphing, and some day they call him into headquarters during
a rush, to help the train dispatcher, and then he has to move into the
city and watch trains on thousands of miles of road, to see that they
don't get together, as train dispatcher. He thinks that position is
good enough, and he hopes they will let him alone in it, but some day
he assists the superintendent, and he is so well posted they are all
surprised. They wonder how that station agent got to knowing all the men
on the road, and how much a train of freight cars weigh, and how many
cents per mile each loaded car earns for the company, and what cars
ought to go to the shops for repairs, and how many new cars will have
to be bought to handle the crops on his division. The 'old man,' as the
president is always called, gets to leaning on this always good-natured,
promoted, station agent, who is so modest he wouldn't offer a suggestion
unless asked his opinion, and when asked gives it so intelligently that
you could set your watch by it, as the boys say. He is always sober,
never sleepy, and whether figuring on the wheat crop of Dakota to a
carload, or wearing rubber boots and dining on sausage and bread for a
couple of days fixing up a washout, he is always calm and smiling, and
every man works as though his own house was afire, till the washout
is repaired and the first train pulls over. When the rich, fat, gouty
directors come around, once a year, to take an account of stock, and see
the property at work, they see the modest man, and by and by he is taken
off his feet by a promotion that almost makes him dizzy. Other railroads
see that he is all wool, and they try to steal him away, but he