breathing slaughter
and law-suits. Judge Abner Halloway and family, arriving at the New York
pier in a speeding taxi from the Eastern Express (five hours late out of
Worthington), just in time to see the Lusitania take his forwarded
baggage for a pleasant outing in Europe, hired a stenographer (male) to
tell the "Clarion" what he thought of the matter, in words of seven
syllables. Professor Beeton Trachs, the globe-trotting lecturer, who
arrived via the "M. and M." for an eight o'clock appearance, at 9.54,
gave the "Clarion" an interview proper to the occasion of having to
abjure a $200 guaranty, wherein the mildest and most judicial opinion
expressed by Professor Trachs was that crawling through a tropical
jungle on all fours was speed, and being hurtled down a mountain on the
bosom of a landslide, comfort, compared to travel on the "Mid and Mud."

All these and many similar experiences, the "Clarion" published in its
"News of the M. and M." column. It headed them, "Stories of Survivors."
For six weeks the railroad endured the proddings of ridicule. Then the
Fourth Vice-President of the road appeared in Mr. Harrington Surtaine's
sanctum. He was bland and hinted at advertising. Two weeks later the
Third Vice-President arrived. He was vague and hinted at reprisals. The
Second Vice-President presented himself within ten days thereafter,
departed after five unsatisfactory minutes, and reported at
headquarters, with every symptom of an elderly gentleman suffering from
shock, that young Mr. Surtaine had seemed bored. The First
Vice-President then arrived on a special train.

"What do you want, anyway?" he asked.

"Decent passenger service for Worthington," said the editor. "Just what
I've told every other species _and_ number of Vice-President on your
list."

"You get it," said the First Vice-President.

Thus was afforded another example of that super-efficiency which, we are
assured, marks the caste of the American railroad as superior to all
others, and which consists in sending four men and spending several
weeks to do what one could do better in a single day. In the course of a
few weeks the Midland & Big Muddy did bring its service up to a
reasonable standard, and the owner of the "Clarion" savored his first
pleasant proof of the power of the press.

Vastly less important, but swifter and more definite in results and more
popular in effect, was the "Clarion's" anti-hat-check campaign. The
Stickler, Worthington's