A few companies endeavor to arrange the time and transportation which enables certain city ticket agents to journey over the main line of their property for educative reasons, but the experienced assistants are too infrequently included, are seldom sent on an excursion into outside territory, and never attend a ticket agents’ association meeting, and yet, the nature of their duties implies ability to promptly and accurately answer innumerable questions regarding junction connections, baggage transfer, location of foreign line depots, dining and sleeping facilities as well as geographical peculiarities. Books there are that print some of this information, but often the enquirer departs disappointed without exact details, but to the men who have been over the ground with eyes open, it is decidedly satisfying to be able to intelligently submit the facts and note how your statements carry conviction and impress the recipient. Of all people needing the experience of travel, the ticketing agent who directs others on their journeys should be first to possess that advantage. Dispensing to these gentlemen few promises and religiously observing those is a strong undercurrent in shaping your course. Unfailing attention to reservation requests, prompt news of the whereabouts of specific shipments, and early notification of upward tariff revisals, &c., &c., are assets that help forge a friendship out of which springs new business, which a “fourflusher” or thoughtless one is prone to overlook after his final handshake. “O consistency, thou art a jewel.” In circles where the weed is so popular, the “eternal cigar” is good-naturedly accepted only as a lubricant to the wheels of conversation, but in the name of all that is gloomy and peculiar do not insult the intelligence of some captain of industry, or “regular fellow”, by flashing on him the moment you enter The Presence, what seems like a transparent bribe in the form of a cheroot a few degrees better than the “Bartender’s Revenge”. Many of them indulge a weakness for more delicate fragrance at Half a Dollar for three or two. Because such a contretemps was studiously avoided by the writer several years ago, a prominent Hamilton, Canada, merchant--then patronizing a competitor--gave “our route” a dozen cars of eastbound California fruit and explained why. Few transportation people are so sinuous and adept as to be “all things to all men” without “trimming” and loss of self-respect, where one representative is quite _au fait_ with the powers that be, another will make indifferent headway, but you may note in your log book that these observations outline some practices which will retain old acquaintances and secure a fair measure of new business. [Illustration: BELLEVILLE’S CONTRIBUTION TO TRANSPORTATION An exceptional record in this field of endeavor 1. W. B. BAMFORD, District Freight Agent, Canadian Pacific Railway, Toronto, Ont.