On the magic carpet of Bagdad the fortunate travelers of a fabulous age were transported to their destination, over valley, river, and mountain with a certainty and dispatch that has been unparalleled in the annals of passenger transportation. But the magic carpet, despite the generous measure of its service, seems to have been lost to following generations, and only its reputation, doubtless somewhat amplified by the telling, remains to set a high standard to succeeding transportation enterprises. Service is a much-used and a much-abused word. It has manifold significance. It may be a personal thing and carry the conscientious effort of individuals eager to do for others offices which they desire performed; it may be purely mechanical and consist only in the provision of the "ways and means" to secure a desired end. It may be a combination of both; a system or organization instituted for the accomplishment of a duty or work beneficial to a community. A great railroad affords such a service. Greater in its scope than any railroad, the Pullman Company provides a more vast, intricate, and complete service to the people of the United States, a service unequaled in all the world. [Illustration: Pullman sleeping car, latest design, with outline drawing showing how the car is supplied with light, water, and heat] A study of the scope and ramifications of the Pullman operations deserves more than passing comment; it is of interest to everyone, for everyone is to some degree a traveler; an actual or a potential Pullman patron. In preceding chapters has been traced the story of passenger transportation in America; how the first railroads offered communication only between a few closely related cities, and how later the growth of the railroads brought into direct communication practically every village and metropolis throughout the land. Then came the time when the inadequacy of such complete but disconnected service struck the imagination of a man who saw the endless miles of track of countless railroads bound together by a supplemental system to which all railroads contributed and from which they profited, and by which, most of all, the public would enjoy a service of a scope which could otherwise only be attained by an actual combination of these railroads into a single company. But the vision of the founder of the Pullman Company did not stop at the idea of a unified system. He had not only seen the discomfort and inconvenience of countless changes from one train to another at railroad junctions and the midnight gatherings on the station platform; he had seen in tired eyes the fatigue of sleeplessness; he had seen in the preponderance of male passengers the lack of a protection sufficient to permit the free travel of unescorted women; he had realized, and his realization ranks high with the thoughts of the world's innovators, that travel was a hardship and that it could be made a pleasure.