ng bag?"

"Not so keen as I might be," said Frank. "Why?"

"Because he had something else I'd rather have. Remember that little
printing press?"

"Oh, what he uses to print calling cards on?"

"How would you like to go snooks with me and get that, Frank?"

"Well, it certainly would be swell to print our own calling cards,
Harry."

"He wants $6.50 for it, though."

"Oh! That's different. Here, let me sell the bag, anyhow. That'll be
a start."

Frank, already budding into finance, sold the bag for one dollar and
twenty-five cents.

"Well, we're still shy $5.25, Frank," said the coming Finance Minister
of Canada.

"Yes, and it's your move, Harry."

"All right, I've got an idea. You wait."

Next day the sprouting financiers met, when Harry had a fine steel
trout rod.

"See that, Frank? Got that from dad. Made me a present of it--at my
own suggestion. What is she worth?"

"Don't you want to fish, Harry?"

"Not if you can sell the rod."

Frank took it and looked it over.

"Sure!" he said. "I'll sell that for the company."

There being no guile in either of these young men, the sequel is that
Frank sold the trout rod for $5.25 and Harry proudly took the entire
$6.50 to the neighbour, paid for the press and had it taken home to his
attic, where it must be presumed the two of them spent rainy days
printing calling cards for Draytons and Baillies.

Canada took very little interest in Drayton till he came to be Chairman
of the Railway Commission. But by that time the said Commission was no
longer the grand court it had been in the days of J. Pitt Mabee. It
settled more disputes than ever and settled them as well as ever.
Drayton had almost twice the mileage to cover that Mabee had in 1903.
He did it with tireless exactitude. He was less concerned with the
ethical issues at stake in decisions between railways and communities
than with the unethical fact of such a prodigal lot of lines having
been built at all to give trouble to the nation. We were just getting
to the end of the race of the railroads, when thousands of foreigners
had been dumped into the country with shovel and pick, and thousands of
miles of new railway built that would shortly be a charge on the
country.

An able writer a few years ago wrote a series of articles in a Canadian
publication headed, "Is there a Railway Muddle?" Being himself a
railwayman he seemed to think that the muddle, if any, was chargeable
to condition