The last thing the president did that day was to have me in his office for a long, earnest conversation. He required a private secretary. Several candidates had failed. What he needed was not a stenographer or a filing clerk. That kind of service could be had from the back office. He needed someone who could assist in a larger way, especially someone who could write, as I could. He had looked me up. The recommendations were satisfactory. He knew the college from which I came and it was sound. In short, would I take the job at $200 a month. “I must tell you,” he said, “there is no future in the railroad business, no career for a young man. A third of the railway mileage of the country is bankrupt. God only knows if even this railroad can stand up. But you will get some valuable experience, and if at any time you wish to go back to newspaper work I’ll undertake to get you a place in New York no worse than the one you leave.” I protested that I knew almost nothing of economics and finance. “All the better,” he said. “You have nothing unsound to get rid of. I’ll teach you by the short cuts. Two books, if you will read them hard, will give you the whole groundwork.” I accepted. ii The next morning Mr. Valentine presented me to the company secretary, Jay C. Harbinger, and desired him to introduce me around the shop. “This way,” said Harbinger, taking me in hand with an air of deep, impersonal courtesy. He stepped ahead at each door, opened it, held it, and bowed me through. His attitude of deference was subtly yet unmistakably exaggerated. He was a lean, tall, efficient man, full of sudden gestures, who hated his work and did it well, and sublimated the petty irritations of his position in the free expression of violent private judgments. We stopped first in his office. It was a small room containing two very old desks with swivel chairs, an extra wooden chair at the end of each desk for visitors, a letter squeeze and hundreds of box letter files in tiers to the ceiling, with a step ladder for reaching the top rows. There was that smell of damp dust which lingers in a place after the floor has been sprinkled and swept. “That’s the vice-president’s desk,” said Harbinger, indicating the other as he sat down at his own, his hands beneath him, and began to rock. “He’s never here,” he added, swinging once all around and facing me again. He evidently couldn’t be still. The linoleum was worn through under his restless feet. “What brings you into this business?” he asked. “Accident,” I said. “It gets you in but never out,” he said. “It got me in thirty years ago.... Are you interested in mechanical things?” “Like what?” I asked.