"I'm guilty," said the G. P. A. "This man goes everywhere to get business for us, and he gets it. He kneels with the preacher, he talks high art with the Browning societies, and he gets drunk with the drinkers--all in the name of this railroad system. Now we propose to kick him out, still in the name of this railroad system." The president saw the point, and together they took hold of the T. P. A. and made him a decent, sober man. To-day he is one of the most efficient officers of that very road, and he owes it all to that broad-minded G. P. A. Geniality, urbanity, courtesy are the major part of a travelling passenger agent's equipment, as they are part of his chief's in these days, when the rates have ceased to enter into the fight for traffic. Rates? The rates must be the same nowadays by all routes of the same class; and so the T. P. A. _must_ bring out the excellence of his line, leaving none behind because of a false sense of modesty. He is silent about other roads, save as they may lead to and from the system that he represents. You want to go to Kickapoo. You could go to Milltown by the Transcontinental and get from there to Kickapoo most easily by the main line of the St. Louis Southwestern, but the travelling passenger agent frowns his first frown at the very suggestion. The St. Louis Southwestern is the worst competitor that Transcontinental has for passenger traffic, and the T. P. A. does not propose to send business over its rails. So he ignores your suggestion. "We have our own line into Kickapoo," he tells you--the old smile returning. "You won't have to leave Transcontinental." And such a line! It happens to be a branch of the worst jerkwater type. To reach Kickapoo over Transcontinental you must go to Milltown and change from the comfortable Limited to a less comfortable train, which takes you to Quashalong Junction. There you find a seat on a local which jogs along at twenty miles an hour for the greater part of the afternoon until you get into Miller's Forks. When you reach Miller's Forks you almost abandon hope. For the thirty-mile stretch from that cross-roads over into Kickapoo is a grass-grown stretch of half-neglected track over which a combination freight and passenger-train--adequately described on the time-card as mixed--ambles once in twenty-four hours. By the time you have finished that trip you will have arrived in Kickapoo without leaving the rails of the Transcontinental, but you will also probably have registered a vow never to travel on them again, if they can be avoided.