On “special” party dates passengers were concentrated at junctional points and afterwards personally conducted to Detroit, Chicago or St. Paul. Mr. B. Travers, city ticket agent at Paris, still, has informed me that parties of 75 and 100 people were occasionally gathered there, and such a pretentious exodus was known to earn a serenade by the local brass band at the time of departure. The sturdy knights of ploughshares and other instruments of peace had to be and were better mixers than the stall-fed variety of traveller of this day, and the consciousness that theirs was a common object made easy the upsetting of social barriers to the music of violin, mouth-organ and jew’s harp. The journey always ensured incident and good-fellowship, and perhaps, some disappointing experiences. The records, considerately offered me for perusal, do not include the name of the escorting agent who, while wrapped in the arms of Morpheus in a Chicago hotel, suffered the loss of his train’s entire proceeds by the deft removal of a panel in the door on which his coat was hanging. It was when escorting a party westward that Will Wyley, with “M.C.R.,” suffocated, and M. Boesmburgh had a very close call in the burning of the hotel “Newhall” at Milwaukee. [Illustration: D. O. PEASE, Manager, Ogilvie Mills, Hamilton, Ex-District Passenger Agent, G.T.R., also C.M. & St. P. R., Montreal. A. F. WEBSTER, General S.S. Ticket Agent, Toronto, and former Canadian Agent of Blue Line. M. C. DICKSON, Ex-District Passenger Agent, G.T.R., Toronto, formerly C.P.A. Union Pacific Ry. in Ontario. THOMAS HENRY, Chief of Commissariat, Canada Steamship Lines, formerly General Agent, Northern Pacific Railway, Montreal. E. ALLEN, widely known Superintendent, Canadian Express Co., Toronto. The late WM. G. MCLEAN, of Beatty Line and C.P.R., former General Agent, G.N. Railway, Toronto and Montreal. JOHN PAUL, District Freight Agent, Canadian Northern Railway, Winnipeg and former agent M.C.R., London, Ont. ] Three different gauges, or widths between rails, were accepted as standard in different parts of Canada and United States at that time, and to permit interchange of equipment, three rails were sometimes laid. Just before the adoption of the standard, broad gauge, 4 feet, 8½ inches, became general in America, a good-sized party bound for the west were delayed at Toronto half a day awaiting the readjustment of that portion of the “Great Western” to Hamilton, Ont. In the forenoon one rail over the entire distance, 39 odd miles, was moved in and spiked down in its new position. This must have been quite a feat 35 years ago in the absence of those simplifying methods practiced to-day. John Weatherston, father of Nicholas and Robert of the same name, supervised the work.