But a good engine, a good job and good pay. They had the pleasant habit of assigning a crew to a definite engine in those days, and that piece of motive power invariably became their pet and pride. A good job was not only an honest one, but one of a considerable distinction. And fifty dollars a month was not bad pay, when cheese was eight cents a pound and butter seven, and a kind friend apt to give you all the eggs that you could take home in the top of your hat. Remuneration, in its last analysis is forever a comparative thing--and nothing more. CHAPTER VI THE R. W. & O. PROSPERS--AND EXPANDS In the mid-seventies the young city of Watertown was entering upon a rare era in which culture and great prosperity were to be blended. The men who walked its pleasant maple-shaded streets were real men, indeed: the Flower brothers--George W., Anson R. and Roswell P.--George B. Phelps, Norris Winslow, the Knowlton brothers--John C. and George W.--Talcott H. Camp, George A. Bagley, these were the men who were the town's captains of industry of that day. An earlier generation had passed away; Norris Woodruff, O. V. Brainard, Orville Hungerford; these men had played their large parts in the upbuilding of Watertown and were gone or else living in advanced years. A new generation of equal energy and ability had come to replace them. Roswell P. Flower was upon the threshold of that remarkable career in Wall Street that was to make him for a time its leader and give him the large political honor of becoming Governor of the State of New York. His brother, George W., first Mayor of Watertown, was tremendously interested in each of the city's undertakings. George B. Phelps had risen from the post of Superintendent of the old Potsdam & Watertown to be one of the town's richest men. He had a city house in New York--a handsome "brownstone front" in one of the "forties"--and in his huge house in Stone Street, Watertown, the luxury of a negro valet, John Fletcher, for many years a familiar figure upon the streets of the town.