that the blusterer could not procure a car himself and bethought him to pounce on the inoffensive rag man and purloin the coveted empty box car. Fortified by an agreement with an anxious fresh fruit buyer, whereby he is guaranteed forty refrigerator cars in return for their haul homeward a few hundred miles, a call is made on a canned salmon distributor. This is his acknowledgment to your opening salute. “Who told you I had a car of salmon? I have no salmon and am not thinking of fish just now--this isn’t Friday”. However, he proved amenable to reason and issued a routing order. A Grand Trunk Railway commercial agent related to me recently the following outline of a verbal castigation administered to himself by a mourner who must have been wearing indigo spectacles: “The idea of giving business to ‘U.M.C.’ lines, we’ll have no truck or trade with them. It is very indiscreet of you to dare to try; when you can compete on an equal basis with the ‘C.P.R.’ then come in”. A well intentioned, but premature overture earned one young general agent, new to his territory, an undeserved rebuke in response to his civil enquiries: “Well, I guess I hav’nt anything to say to you to-day”. “I came in primarily to ask you to take luncheon with me, would you join me at one o’clock?” “No, I had my lunch at the proper hour” came the quick rejoinder. Fortunately, the balance of the day was spent among “white men” of whom there are 95 per cent. naturally inclined to transact business with reason and decency, and their broad guage tendency seems to expand in proportion to the magnitude and responsibility of their undertakings. Another gentleman occasioned a good deal of laughter telling on himself the story of taking his new chief on an introductory tour and being embarrassed to learn that the first manufacturer they called on had been dead for a year, and the second one, whom our friend knew to some extent, asking him what his name was. It takes time to talk away or live down these little incidents. Now and then a modest shipper with about one car a year traveling in your direction, will unblushingly suggest that he be loaned one of your annual passes for a little trip down to New York, and I recall hearing of a wallet of transportation, in the wrong hands, being lost in the railway yards near Rochester. A number of the boys remember certain shippers who have had an insatiable longing for some substantial token in reciprocity for the traffic they could control, with a leaning towards a variety of household furnishings and what-nots.