good
face. The fact is, the wood foreman had boomed the Englishman's stock
before the Manager saw him.

The path of the Englishman was not strewn with flowers for the next few
months. Any number of men who had been on the road when he was in the
English navy-yards felt that they ought to have had this little
promotion. The local foremen along the line saw in the young Englishman
the future foreman of the new shops, and no man went out of his way to
help the stranger. But in spite of all obstacles, the shop grew from day
to day, from week to week; so that as the old year drew to a close the
machinery was getting into place. The young foreman, while a hard
worker, was always pleasant in his intercourse with the employees, and
in a little while he had hosts of friends. There is always a lot of
extra work at the end of a big job, and now when Christmas came there
was still much to do. The men worked night and day. The boiler that was
to come from Chicago had been expected for some time. Everything was in
readiness, and it could be set up in a day; but it did not come.
Tracer-letters that had gone after it were followed by telegrams;
finally it was located in a wreck out in a cornfield in Illinois on the
last day of the year.

A great many of the officials were away, and the service was generally
demoralized during the holidays, so that the appropriation for which the
Englishman was working at M. had for the moment been forgotten; the
shops were completed, the machinery was in, but there was no boiler to
boil water to make steam.

That night, when the people of M. were watching the old year out and the
new year in, the young Englishman with a force of men was wrecking the
pump-house down by the station. The little upright boiler was torn out
and placed in the machine shops, and with it a little engine was driven
that turned the long line-shaft.

At dawn they ran a long pipe through the roof, screwed a locomotive
whistle on the top of it, and at six o'clock on New Year's morning the
new whistle on the new shops at M. in Iowa, blew in the new year.
Incidentally, it blew the town in for $47,000.

This would be a good place to end this story, but the temptation is
great to tell the rest.

When the shops were opened, the young Englishman was foreman. This was
only about twenty-five years ago. In a little while they promoted him.

In 1887 he went to the Wisconsin Central. In 1890 he was made
Superintendent of machinery o