"They tried to put this over on me," he says as he shows a local ticket which had been sent to him for redemption at full value. The pasteboard is filled with small burned holes. "The breezy young man who forwarded this exhibit to me claimed that he had used no portion of this ticket and then apologized to me for its condition. His small boy, he said, had burned it with Fourth-of-July punk. "Punk? That was punk. The small boy did not do a thorough job. Every hole burned there was burned to hide a conductor's punchmark. You can see the edges of three of them; and those three punch marks show that the ticket issued from B---- to T---- was used 300 miles from B---- to A---- and not used from A---- to T----. When that young man threatened us with trouble on that ticket deal, we threatened him with arrest. After that he shut up." So does the general passenger agent come in constant contact with the great American public. His outside mail is probably the largest at headquarters, and it contains letters of every sort, asking innumerable questions, praising and damning his road with equal interest and force. One letter will commend a courteous conductor, the next will find some fault with the dining-car service. It is not so very long ago that a big Eastern railroad sent out a general order that the raw oysters on its dining-cars should be served affixed to their shells, because a woman from Sioux City had written a positive assertion that the shells were being used over and over again for canned oysters. Some of the railroads have already begun to systematize this whole matter of complaints. One New York City line which sells a large amount of transportation in small packages every day (two million passengers is its average in twenty-four hours) has a Harvard man at high salary just to receive those letters and give diplomatic answer to each of them. Each complaint is first acknowledged and then investigated; the person who made the complaint is notified of the final action taken. If a matter of fare is involved (the complicated transfer systems of New York make such questions frequent), and the company is wrong, it cheerfully acknowledges its fault and forwards car tickets as reimbursement. Many times when a conductor or a motorman has forgotten his manners, he is sent to make a personal apology to the aggrieved passenger, as a price of holding his position. That street railway company has won many friends out of persons who had complained to it, because of this method. But here is the general passenger agent of a big steam road, who holds a considerably different view of this very matter.