again and again expressed his appreciation of the courtesy and thoughtfulness that had planned the surprise. It was just one of the ways by which the apparently unemotional Van Horne paid chivalrous personal compliment to the men whose character and courage he had learned to respect as they stood by him to their last dollar in the great task to which he had given himself so determinedly for four laborious years. When Mr. Van Horne reached Montreal, after the opening of the main line, he began to speed up the plans he had been putting already in operation for the perfecting of the road and the increase of traffic in all directions. The quality of the road-bed was of even higher standard than the Government contract required. It will be remembered that once, when the road-bed was still new, Van Horne had aboard his train a number of Eastern men who were going out West in regard to the valuation of the Government section of the road constructed by Onderdonk. While still on the Canadian Pacific section in the mountains, Van Horne walked up the platform at Field and said to the engineer, Charley Carey, a fearless, skilful driver, “Let her out a bit, Charlie, we will show these fellows that they are on a railroad fit to run on, though the Government section is not.” Charlie “let her out” and made a fifty-one-mile run in an hour and wound up by doing the seventeen miles from Golden to Donald in fifteen minutes, and all safe. When they pulled up there, with a flourish and flashing fire on the rails as the brakes were put down hard to prevent running by the platform, the gentlemen from the East needed no further demonstration. The Canadian Pacific road-bed was all right even in those early days. But Van Horne knew that much had still to be done. Construction had been careful, but rapid, and steel and stone and cement would have to replace many wooden culverts and bridges. Trestles had to be filled in or replaced by stone or steel. Rolling stock, shops, roundhouses, yards, stations, wharves and all manner of similar things had to be provided. Branch lines to feed the main line would have to gridiron the country, and connections would have to be made with the big systems south of the line.