was shaking hands with me and trying to say something
about my saving his life. I took a shine to him at once on account of
his pluck and our friendship thus begun has lasted through the years
until now time and fate have thrown us both together on the same line of
railroad.

The railroad men as a class are the most jovial set of men one could
find in any profession, well educated, broad minded, and always
considerate of others and at the same time they know their business
thoroughly, as they have to serve many years as apprentices, so to
speak, in railroading, before they are given places of trust and
responsibility, and the man who has reached the position of president or
general manager of a railroad system, has learned pretty much all there
is to be learned about the iron horse and the steel road, and they use
that knowledge in providing for the safety and comfort of the millions
of lives that are annually intrusted to their keeping.

The general manager is responsible not only for the lives of the
traveling public, but of the army or railroad employees under him and he
is supposed to know everything, and must always be prepared to do the
right thing in the right place at the right time, and as in many cases
life and death depend on it, he must know how.

[Illustration: The Close of My Railroad Career]

A college education does not make a railroad manager, although it may
help to do so. He in a great measure gets his education in the school of
experience, and in some cases it is a hard school, and the most exacting
of all schools, but at the same time it is a school in which one can
learn anything under the sun, and learn it well, and in these days of
the twentieth century's activity and progress, it is the man who knows
how to do things that makes the world move. And after boiling everything
down there is left in the pot two undisputable facts. They are that the
railroad men cause the world to move by knowing how to do things, the
other is that the railroad men move the people who live in the world,
thus they move things all around. And they are continually on the move
themselves, which goes to prove that they are different from many other
people inasmuch as they practice what they preach. And from these men of
all classes from the president down I have received courtesies and the
kindest of consideration, and these pleasant associations are pleasant
memories to me and will always remain so.

It was my pleasu