For the general passenger agent is _per se_, an advertiser. There are two affiliated and yet quite distinctive functions to his office. The older function, the one for which it was really created when railroads were young, is that of issuing tickets and selling them. The newer function, and to-day the all-important function, is that of keeping the road before the eyes of the travel-mad public--an advertising function. A few years ago, a big Eastern road had to change general passenger agents because of this very thing. The man who had held the job was in almost every way absolutely efficient. He had been reared in the routine of his office; he knew its vast details as well as any man might ever hope to know them. But he was a detail man, and there he stopped. The road needed more of a figurehead, a better advertiser. The late George H. Daniels was in many respects the best passenger agent that American railroading has ever known. He was the forerunner of the general passenger agent of to-day--a well-known figure in the great State that his railroad served, being interviewed by reporters--and lady reporters, too--on every conceivable subject in the public eye; addressing dinners in metropolitan New York, or in suburban Yonkers, or anywhere else in the State, with rare facility, yet now and then adroitly bringing in reference to the "four-track trail" by which he was employed. Other roads took heed of Daniels. The general passenger agent became less and less a man of office routine and of ticket detail, more and more of a public figure. He called Mayors of important cities by their first names; he kept close to the pulsing heart of the public press by friendly intimacy with the reporters; spoke at two, three, four dinners a week. The Prince Charming of the railroad is, indeed, a development. But behind the smiles of this prince, behind the phraseology of words spoken or written that glorify "the road," there is a serious aspect of his life. He must capitalize that splendid urbanity, that jocose wit, into ticket-sales. In the beginning he was created to sell tickets, and sell tickets he must. On his ability to sell tickets, and not as a popular public figure, will he be measured by the board of directors--that delegation of grim-faced gentlemen, who place small market value on either urbanity or jocosity.