“To keep my knife away from my face, for one thing,” he answered. “Then a gentleman eats very slowly while he indulges in conversation. He's got to be able to talk about Brignoli and Madame Piccolomini--ain't that a grand name?--and Mrs. Siddons and Lester Wallack, with a word once in a while about the Missouri Compromise. When he gets through he washes the tips of his fingers. One of them told a vulgar story, and it seemed to me that we needed a bath for our minds as well as for our fingers. The chairman liked me, I guess, for he offered me some of his stock at a low price, and said they wanted me on the directory. I went in, and now I'm looking into the whole railroad problem.” He began to unroll a great map which he had been making, and which lay on a broad table. It was sixty feet long, and showed a section of the country some two hundred miles wide from Boston to Chicago. “I won't bother you with details,” he 'said, “but I have a great plan. It will narrow this space between New York and Chicago. It will build up a chain of great cities. It will make a market for goods and quicken their delivery. It will furnish a model for the development of other parts of the republic.” The eyes of the young man glowed with enthusiasm. Then he shook with laughter. “That's pretty good for the boy with a wooden leg that you met on the road to Canaan, isn't it?” he asked. “You see, the hand-made gentleman is getting along. He's took his mind off himself--partly--and put it on to other things. I don't need so much looking after as I did. I can talk pretty well, and know how to conduct myself in any company. Ye see, practice makes perfect, and I've practised decency for a long time. It's like breathing. Of course, I might be better inside, but outside I'll do for the time being.” “I'd like to hear more of your plan,” I suggested. “It's this, in a nutshell,” he said: “I want to combine all the railroads between Boston, New York, and Chicago in one system. Now, if you're going from New York to Chicago, you change at Albany and stay all night; you change again at Syracuse and stay all night, and again at Buffalo, and so on. Of course, you can ride all night, but it wears you out. I want a better road-bed and heavier rails and lighter cars and bigger engines and more power to handle 'em, and a continuous trip. Why shouldn't we travel nights with comfort?” The hand-made gentleman strode up and down the room and gestured like a man making a speech. “Five men have twenty times the power of one. Did you ever think of that?” he asked. “When you put two and two together you get about sixteen, but they've got to be one before they can be sixteen. That suggests the value of combination.” He paused before me, and added: “Here's the trouble. The idea is bigger'n I am. There's only one man in the world who can carry it out.” “Who is that?” I inquired.