Tommy had been home but a few days when he was ordered to report to the President of the road at Indianapolis. The President was favorably impressed by the boy’s modesty. He sent him to the General Passenger Agent, who, finding that Tommy could read fairly well, set him reading the newspapers, clipping out and pasting on a broad piece of cardboard the daily comments of the press upon the road and its management. Upon another card he pasted the market and stock reports, and upon still another the railway news of the day, the name of the paper from which the cutting came being written at the bottom of each item. All this was for the convenience of busy officials. Tommy was greatly interested in his new work, and in a little while became expert. When he opened a newspaper his eye swept the page, and if there were a cap. “V” or an “R” he would catch it almost instantly and read what was said of the Vandalia or of railroads in general. There is no work in the passenger department of a railroad that does not sharpen the intellect and quicken the eye. The office of the General Passenger Agent is a school of itself, and a boy beginning with a very limited education will come out of such an office in a few years with an edge on him that would let him pass for at least a high school graduate. Tommy read constantly. He read the advertisements of the Vandalia and of other roads as well, and made comparisons. He ventured one day to call the attention of the Assistant General Passenger Agent to the plain, prosy unattractiveness of the company’s advertising matter. He showed the ads. of a number of other lines, and famous soap display ads., and suggested a picture of the White Mail. The cut was made and proved very attractive, for the reason that nobody had ever seen a train of white cars in print before. The editorial page of a New York daily, famous then as now for its clean type and clean English, attracted the boy’s notice, and he read it religiously every day. The General Passenger Agent remembered distinctly that the boy had declared with characteristic frankness at their first meeting that he “didn’t know nothing about the passenger business.” He noticed that the young man’s form of speech had undergone a wonderful change. This was due to the fact that Tommy McGuire was remarkably observing. His daily intercourse was with the higher clerks and officials of the road. These men were his teachers,--these and the great editor in Nassau Street, whom he had never seen. When winter and the dull times came, the General Passenger Agent persuaded Tommy to go to school. He objected to losing so much time, but, when assured that he could have his old place back in the spring, with an increase of pay, he consented. He attended a little college for boys, in St. Louis.