The term "station-agent" means, practically, the person in charge of a small or medium-sized station. When one of these men is promoted to the charge of a large city station, either freight or passenger, he becomes really a local superintendent, his duties then consisting very largely in the supervision of an army of clerks and laborers who must, each in his place, be as capable as the agent himself. The agent at a small station has a great multiplicity of duties to perform. He must sell tickets, be a good book-keeper, and a faithful switch-tender. He generally must be a telegraph-operator and must be vigorous physically. He must be ready, like the conductor, to submit to some abuse from ill-bred customers, and should be the peer of the business men of his town. He often encounters almost as great a variety of knotty problems as the superintendent himself, though he has the advantage that he can generally turn them over to a superior if he feels unequal to them. The practical difficulties that most beset him are those incident to doing everything in a hurry. People who buy tickets wait until the train is about to start before presenting themselves at the office. Then the agent has a dozen other things to attend to, and must therefore detect counterfeit ten-dollar bills with the expertness of a Washington treasury-clerk. Just as a train reaches his station the train despatcher's click is heard on the wires, and he must drop everything and receive (for the conductor) a telegram in which an error of a single word would very likely involve the lives of passengers. At a very small station the checking of baggage devolves on the agent, his overburdened back being thus loaded with one more straw. He is in many cases agent for the express company, and so must count, seal, superscribe, and way-bill money packages and handle oyster-kegs and barrels of beer at a moment's notice. Women with wagon-loads of loose household effects to go by freight, and shippers of car-loads of cattle, for which a car must be specially fitted up, will appear just as the distracted station-man is receiving a telegram with one side of his brain and selling a ticket with the other. The household goods must be weighed and tagged, the sewing-machine tied up, and tables repaired; the cattle-shipper must be given a short lecture on the legal bearings of the bargain for transportation which he is about to make, and his demand that his live-stock shall be carried 500 miles more quickly than human animals are taken over the same road is to be gently repressed. It is not every day that a small station is enlivened by this sort of excitement, yet it is common, and is familiar to every station agent. The variety in the duties of this position is, however, a great advantage to the ambitious young man, because it serves to give him a good lift toward a valuable business education. He can learn about the methods and knacks and tricks of many different kinds of business, and can profit by