A man--a nervous, tired man--was bound east through the state of New York upon the Lake Shore Limited. His destination was Kingston, which is situate upon the west bank of the Hudson River, almost half way between New York and Albany. The route of the Lake Shore Limited is down the east shore of the river, without a stop between Albany and New York. Anyone who knows the Hudson Valley well knows how atrocious are the facilities for crossing the river at almost any point between those two cities. This tired, nervous man planned to catch the last train of the afternoon down the West Shore Railroad from Albany to Kingston. Under normal conditions he had about thirty minutes' leeway in which to make the change; but on this occasion the Lake Shore Limited was a little more than thirty minutes late and he did not alight at Albany--he had no wish to hang around there until some time in the early morning. He decided that he would go through to New York, cross the city from the Grand Central Station to Weehawken and then go through to Kingston on a night train. This meant 180 extra miles of travel; but the man was in a very great hurry and with him time counted more than miles. As his train swept across the bridge and out of Albany the conductor came through. He was a round, genial-faced fellow, typical of that other generation of train captains that one often finds upon the older railroads of the land; and the man from Kingston halted him--told his story very much as we have told it here. "I didn't know but that, if you were going to stop for water at Poughkeepsie, I might slip off some way," he finally ventured. "That would leave me less than twenty miles from home." The conductor did not hesitate. "We don't stop at Poughkeepsie--for water or anything else," he said. "But I'll stop at Rhinecliff for you." Rhinecliff is on the east bank of the Hudson, directly opposite Kingston. That seemed too good to be true--and the man stammered out his thanks. "I didn't think you'd stop this crack train for anybody," he said quite frankly. "The time card doesn't--" "This train stops for the proper accommodation of the patrons of this road," interrupted the conductor, "and I'm its high judge. You lost out on your connection at Albany through no fault of yours. It was our fault and we are doing our best to make it up to you." Consider the value of such a man to the organization which employs him. That little act was worth more to the big railroad whose uniform he bore than a ton of advertising tracts or a month's service of its corps of soliciting agents. The Kingston man crossed the river from Rhinecliff in a motor boat and thanked the road and its conductor for the service it had rendered him. He was a large shipper and his factory in the western part of the state is in a hotly competitive territory; but the road that through the good sense of its employee had saved him much valuable time today hardly knows a competitor in his shipping room.