morning he found that official at his
desk and told his story. He had just arrived from England with a wife
and three children and a few dollars. "That's all right," said the
master-mechanic; "I'll give you a job on Monday morning."

This was Saturday, and during the day the first foreman with whom the
Englishman had talked wired that if he would return to E. he could find
work. The young man showed this wire to the master-mechanic. "I should
like to work for you," said he; "you have been very kind to give me
employment after the foreman had refused, but my family is near this
place. They are two hundred miles or more from here."

"I understand," said the kind-hearted official, "and you'd better go
back to E."

The Englishman rubbed his chin and looked out of the window. The train
standing at the station and about to pull out would carry him back to
the junction, but he made no effort to catch it, and the
master-mechanic, seeing this, caught the drift of the young man's mind.
"Have you transportation?" he asked. The stranger, smiling, shook his
head. Turning to his desk, the master-mechanic wrote a pass to the
junction and a telegram requesting transportation over the Iowa Central
from the junction to the town of E.

That Sunday the young man told his young wife that the new country was
"all right." Everybody trusted everybody else. An official would give a
stranger free transportation; a station agent could give you a pass, and
even an engine-driver could carry a man without asking permission.

He didn't know that all these men save the master-mechanic had violated
the rules of the road and endangered their own positions and the chance
of promotion by helping him; but he felt he was among good, kind people,
and thanked them just the same.

On Monday morning he went to work in the little shop. In a little while
he was one of the trustworthy men employed in the place. "How do you
square a locomotive?" he asked the foreman. "Here," said the foreman;
"from this point to that."

That was all the Englishman asked. He stretched a line between the given
points and went to work.

Two years from this the town of M. offered to donate to the railroad
company $47,000 if the new machine shop could be located there, steam up
and machinery running, on the first day of January of the following
year.

The general master-mechanic entrusted the work of putting in the
machinery, after the walls had been built and the place roofe