Though their first superintendent had tasted of the London administration of the Grand Trunk, and had filled a chair in the head office of the New York Central, he had also seen the prolonged effects of too much optimism at Portage la Prairie, had lived through three years of a branch line’s receivership, and had never forgotten the early days in Scotland, when the office equipment of a frugal management included chairs made out of barrels, and a couple of doorknobs functioning as very efficient inkwells. From time to time one has heard the scoffer in the land and on the train--sometimes when using a pass--comparing Canadian Northern infancy with Canadian Pacific maturity and Grand Trunk Pacific magnificence. It was met silently by the reflection that cutting your coat according to your cloth is often a financially hygienic science--it was with us twenty-five years ago. The result? I have said that the bargain with the Manitoba Government provided that we need not pay interest on the guaranteed bonds for three years. But by hewing to the pioneering line, and with men like Billy Walker, “Joe Beef” and Dad Risteen, we paid our fixed charges out of revenue from the start. The first year’s earnings were sixty thousand dollars. The staff, superintendent and all, totalled thirteen, until it was deemed expedient to touch a less ominous figure by engaging a boy. The original office force, the father of the accounting staff of the Canadian Northern, was Cecil Friend, taken from his post as secretary to Robert Kerr, western passenger traffic manager of the C.P.R. He is a man to whom all who have ever worked with him, are devoted. When we became a transcontinental system he was moved from Winnipeg to Toronto, and is now at the Montreal headquarters. While we were colleagues he saw his jurisdiction extend from himself as sole accountant, to a staff of over four hundred people exclusively engaged in his department, and receipts grow from sixty thousand to sixty-seven million dollars a year. If an example of the constancy with which all hands kept at the job of keeping down expenses and putting up revenues be appropriate, I may be forgiven for repeating what happened one summer day. There was an unavoidable accident, a little north of Plumas--a heifer was caught by the cow catcher, and her legs broken. The superintendent happened to be on the train, also a brakeman who had been a butcher. The heifer was useless to the farmer, except as beef, for which his claim on the company would make a low allowance. The train was halted while the brakeman-butcher killed and dressed the heifer, the passengers surrounding the operation. The carcass and hide were put in the baggage car; the carcass was sold to the contractor, whose construction camp was west of Dauphin, the hide was turned into the ordinary channels of trade; the farmer’s claim was paid in full from the receipts for meat and hide, and four dollars were carried into the treasury.