paying half-fare for a ten-year-old girl or to paying full rates for one of fifteen. A person whose income is ten times larger than he deserves will argue twenty minutes to avoid paying ten cents more (in cash) than he would have been charged for a ticket. Passengers with legitimate questions to ask will couch them in vague and backhanded terms, and those with useless ones will take inopportune times to propound them. These are not occasional but every-day experiences. The very best and most intelligent people in the community (excepting those who travel much) are among those who oftenest leave their wits at home when they take a railroad trip. All these people must be met in a conciliatory manner, but without varying the strict regulations in the least degree. The officers of the revenue department are inexorable masters, and passengers offended by alleged uncivil treatment are likely to make absurd complaints at the superintendent's office. A conductor dreads an investigation of this sort, however unreasonable the passengers' complaints may be, because it may tend to show that he lacked tact in handling the case. But after becoming habituated to this sort of dealings, there are still left the occasional disturbances which no amount of philosophy can make pleasant. These are the encounters with drunken and disorderly passengers. The conductor, starting at the forward end of his train, finds, perhaps, in the first car one or two "toughs" who refuse payment of fare and are spoiling for a fight. Care must be taken with this sort of character not to punish him or use the least bit of unnecessary severity, for he will, when sobered off, quite likely be induced by a sharp lawyer to sue the railroad company for damages by assault. The conductor, however, if he be one who has (in his freight-train experience) dealt with tramps, is able to cope with his customer and confine him to the baggage-car or put him off the train. But a tussle of this kind is at best far from soothing to the temper, and the very next car may contain the wife of a nabob, who will expect the most genteel treatment and critically object to any behavior on the part of the conductor which is not fully up to the highest drawing-room standard. Experiences of this kind, it can be readily imagined, are exceedingly trying. The conductor cannot give himself up completely to learning gentility, for he still has need for his old severity.