That sign was a mistake. It was an affront to every person who entered that ticket-office, and remember that every person who enters a ticket-office is at least a potential passenger for the railroad that operates it. It is only charitable to believe that the agent meant to say: "Remember that we are here to give information as well as to sell tickets," for the giving of information is a function of a passenger ticket office. So important has this function become, that the railroads have established desks in the largest of these city offices at which no tickets are sold, but where questions are answered and railroad, steamship, and hotel folders given out. "Public Service stations," the New York Central has begun to call its city ticket-offices and, furthering this idea of courtesy and affability, its general passenger agent has opened a school for the training of its agents. They are taught to answer questions quickly and accurately, and to be, above all things, courteous to the persons who come before them and the potential travellers. * * * * * Just a final look before we leave this passenger department, at its equipment. Its complications are large. Take this matter of tickets, for instance. While the financial department of the road will receive the money that comes in for their sales, and the auditing department takes good care as to the accuracy of the agent's returns, the passenger department has charge of printing and issuing the contract slips by which it agrees to convey its passengers. There is a multiplicity of forms of these, each bearing the signature of the general passenger agent. On smaller roads, the number of forms of local tickets is greatly reduced by writing or stamping the name of the destination on tickets. On a single branch line, with 25 stations, just 600 different styles of printed railroad tickets would be required otherwise; you can imagine the number of styles required for an average system of 1,000 stations. Fortunately, for the passenger department, the use of simplified forms of tickets, where adroit cutting and tearing makes possible the use of a single ticket form for an entire division, has reduced the big ticket-printing bills. Only recently, a machine, on the order of a cash register, has been invented, from which a ticket, accurately stamped and dated, with the destination indelibly printed, can be delivered as demanded. Still, with all these simplified forms of tickets, a big road will hardly carry less than 5,000 standard forms. Then there will be anywhere from a dozen to twenty special forms a week that will have to be printed--for excursions, conventions, and special train movements of every sort. The ticket-printing bill of a big road will easily exceed $40,000 a year. Its folders will cost not less than $50,000, while the twelvemonths' bill for newspaper advertising will more than exceed the combined figure of these two.