They will not tell you of one thing, for of that thing you may judge yourself. Life in Syracuse is punctuated by the railroad and the canal. The canal is not so much of an obstruction unless one of the cumbersome lift-bridges sticks and refuses to move up or down, but that railroad! Every few minutes life in Syracuse comes to an actual standstill because of it. Men whose time is worth ten or fifteen dollars an hour and who grow puffy with over-exertion are violently halted by the passing of switch-engines with trails of box-cars. Appointments are missed. Board meetings at the banks halt for directors--directors who are halted in their turn by the dignified and stately passage of the Canastota Local through the heart of the city. But the old canal is going to go some day--when the State's new barge canal well to the north of the town is completed--and perhaps in that same day Syracuse will have a broad, central avenue replacing the present dirty, foul-smelling ditch. Some day, some very big Syracusan will miss an appointment while he stands in Salina street watching the serene Canastota Local drag its way past him. That missed appointment will cost the very big Syracusan a lot of money and there will be a revolution in Syracuse--a railroad revolution. After that the locomotives will no longer blow their smoky breaths against the fronts of Syracuse's best buildings and grind their way slowly down Washington street from the tunnel to the depot, for the railroad which operates them stands in the forefront of the progressive transportation systems of America, and it is only waiting for Syracuse to take the first definite step of progress. Some day Syracuse--Syracuse delayed--is going to take that step. Only a year or two ago the Chicago Limited held up the carnival parade--and therein lies the final paragraph of this telling of Syracuse.