[Illustration: "YOU MAY HAVE THE MANICURE UPON THE MODERN TRAIN"] [Illustration: "THE DINING-CAR IS A SOCIABLE SORT OF PLACE"] For the haul of these cars the railroads will charge you according to their regularly filed tariffs, unless you have that valued connection with some common carrier. This varies from a minimum of from eighteen to twenty-five first-class fares. In other words, let us assume that the minimum in a particular case is twenty fares. That particular railroad will carry up to twenty persons in the car at its regular fares; if there are more than twenty aboard it will get a full fare ticket from each over the minimum allowance. That is all a matter established as the special train rates are established, not by whim, but by law. Strange as it may seem, the private car mania, in chronic form, seems to attack some railroad presidents most violently. For reasons which show that railroading is a business filled with fine tact and diplomacy, these cars are called business cars. It is also remarkable that for size and elegance they vary in almost inverse ratio to the size and importance of the railroad that owns them. Big railroads, like the Pennsylvania, the Harriman lines, and the New York Central rather pride themselves upon the simplicity of their official cars. Some of these are plain almost to the point of shabbiness. Contrasted with these are the private cars belonging to the head of a great interurban electric line in Southern California, a car so wondrously beautiful that it was carried all the way to Washington, in the Spring of 1905, so that a thousand foreign railroad managers there gathered in convention, might see the attainments of American car-builders. Another Western railroad, a small steam line this time, boasts a president's car with a dining service that cost $2,500. A little Mississippi lumbering road spent $40,000 in providing a private car for its operating head. The big Eastern roads know about all of these cars. Their heads get frequent invitations to take a run over the K., Y. & Z., or some other enterprising jerkwater road that runs from the back waters to the bad lands. Of course, they never take the trip, but they invariably see the next step in the developments. It comes in the form of requests for a "pass for haul of car and party" from Chicago to New York and return. Time was when the New York Central and the Pennsylvania were laid low under the avalanche of requests of this sort. Some of their slower trains were laden down with long strings of these deadhead caravans, and on one memorable occasion a whole section was made up of the prominent private cars of decidedly unprominent railroad officers.