skin and a full shock of red hair.

CHAPTER VII

TAKING A WHIRL AT COMMERCIAL WORK--MY FIRST ATTEMPT--THE GALVESTON FIRE

The memory of my exciting experience in Arizona lasted me a good long
time, and I finally determined to leave the railroad service and try my
hand at commercial work. The two classes are the same, and yet they are
entirely different.

It is a most interesting sight, to the uninitiated, to go into the
operating room of a big commercial office and see the swarms of men and
women bending over glass partitioned tables; nimble footed check boys
running hither and thither like so many flies, carrying to each wire the
proper messages, while the volume of sound that greets your ears is
positively deafening. Every once in a while some operator will raise his
head and yell "Pink," "C. N. D." or "Wire." "Pink" means a message that
is to be rushed; "C. N. D." is a market quotation that is to be hurried
over to the Bucket Shops or Stock Exchange, while "Wire," means a
message that pertains to some wire that is in trouble and such messages
must have precedence over all others. The check boys are trained to
know the destination of each and every wire and work under the direction
of the traffic chief.

Far over on one side of a room is the switch board. To the untutored
mind it looks like numberless long parallel strips of brass tacked on
the side of the wall, and each strip perforated by a number of small
holes, while stuck around, in what seems endless profusion, are many
gutta-percha-topped brass pegs. Yet through all this seeming mass of
confusion, everything is in apple pie order, and each one of those
strips represents a wire and every plug a connection to some set of
instruments. The wire chief and his assistants are in full charge of
this work, and it must needs be a man of great ability to successfully
fill such a place in a large office.

The chief operator has entire supervision over the whole office, and his
duties are hard, constant, and arduous. Like competent train
despatchers, men able to be first-class chief operators are few and far
between. Not only must he be an expert telegrapher, but he must
thoroughly understand line, battery and switch board work, and his
executive ability must be of the highest order.

I had always supposed if a man were a first-class railroad operator he
could do equally good work on a commercial wire; in fact the operator
in a small town is always employed