"California fruit," he says; "they don't think anything of sending it all the way across the continent. You might have thought those ranchers over there on the Pacific coast would have been discouraged when they were told that there were a dozen icing stations between the two oceans, and that the icing cost was prohibitive. They weren't a bit. They just sat down and did some tall thinking, and after a while they developed this type of car. We call it pre-cooled. The car is cleaned and brought to a chill before loading. After that the temperature is not allowed to rise while the fruit is being piled away inside. It is closed and sealed, while still ice-cold, and icy-cold she comes bumping her way east over three or four thousand miles of track. It may be scorching down there along the S. P.; they may be just gasping for air in the Missouri bottoms; but that pre-cooled car comes right along, keeping its cargo fresh and cool and pure. We can deliver her anywhere here on the Atlantic seaboard, and no risk of spoiling the stuff." We slip along another half-dozen cars. The conductor halts again and fumbles with his way-bills. "There's the boy," he laughs. "He's halibut. There's half a dozen halibuts along here in a string." We do not like to show an utter ignorance of the food question and we venture an assertion. "Halibut comes from Newfoundland?" we ask. "How do you get it around here?" The freighter grins sympathetically at our lack of knowledge. "Bless you," he says. "That little fishing pond up there on the Banks isn't big enough for a land which has 27,000,000 folks gathered in its cities. These cars have come in from big Yem Hill's road--all the way from Tacoma up on Puget Sound--State of Washington. Some of those people who live in Boston might have a fit if they knew that their beloved halibut was born and raised in the Pacific Ocean; but that's the truth of the matter. "This fish (and some of it's going straight to Boston to be sold in the very shade of Faneuil Hall), has come 7,000 miles to be eaten on the very shores of the Atlantic. When the fishing ship that caught this cargo was fifty miles off the docks, she began calling Tacoma with her wireless. The yardmaster of the Northern Pacific was ready there for the news from that rat-a-tap. He had a string of refrigerator cars ready; they were ready and set out along the wharf by the time the ship was made fast. "Five minutes later the fish were being loaded into the cars. They had a gang of stevedores working there clock-like, as those fellows work around the big tents of a three-ring circus. First there went in a layer of ice, then a layer of fish, then another of ice. In thirty minutes the job was done. In forty-five minutes that string of fish-cars was coming east on an express-train schedule. It was knocked apart at St. Paul and again at Chicago. Here's our share of the spoils, and we're not loafing here on the old main line.