the best things at low prices, thus (if they keep house) living on fruits, vegetables, etc., of a quality fit for a king. * * * * * [Illustration: At the Spring.] The passenger-train brakeman differs from the freight trainman chiefly in the fact that he must deal with the public, and so must have a care for his personal appearance and behavior, and in the fact that he is _not a brakeman_, the universal air-brake relieving him of all work in this line. His chief duties are those of a porter, though the wide-awake American brakeman, with an eye to future promotion to a conductorship, maintains his dignity and is not by any means the servile call-boy that the English railway porter is. The wearing of uniforms has been introduced here from England and is, in the main, a good feature, though some roads, whose discipline is otherwise quite good, allow their men to appear in slovenly and even ragged clothes. Superintendents should give more care to this matter, as it is not an unimportant one. It affects the men's self-respect and influences their usefulness in other ways. The frugal brakeman cannot wear his blue suit on Sunday or a-visiting, and his Sunday suit when old cannot be used up by week-day wear, so he naturally concludes that his employer is guilty of a little undue severity toward him. Brakemen on the modern "limited" trains (a three hours' run without a stop constituting a day's work) have in some respects too easy a task, and their minds are more likely to rust out than to wear out. They have a constant care, to be sure, and sometimes must "go back to flag," the same as a freight trainman, but, in the main, their berth would about fill the ideal of the Irish shoveller who confided to his fellow-workman that "for a nice, clane, aisy job" he would like to be a bishop. Brakemen have had the reputation of doing a good deal of flirting, and many a country-girl has found a worthy husband among them; but there is not so much of this method of diversion as formerly; both passenger and freight men now have to attend more strictly to business, and they cannot conveniently indulge in side play. There are still, however, enough short branch-lines and slow-going roads in backwoods districts to insure that flirting shall not become a lost art in this part of the world.