by the railroad company and does the
little amount of commercial work in addition to his other duties.

After leaving Blue Field I loafed a while, but that's tiresome work at
best, so I journeyed down to Galveston, Texas, one bright fall morning,
and after trying my luck at the railroad offices, I wandered into the
commercial office on the Strand and asked George Clarke, the chief
operator, for a job.

"What kind of a man are you?" he said.

"First-class in every respect, sir," I replied.

"Sit down there on the polar side of that Houston quad and if you are
any account, I'll give you a job at seventy dollars per month."

Now a "Quad" is an instrument whereby four messages are going over the
_same_ wire at the _same_ time. The mechanism of the machine is
different in every respect from the old relay, key and sounder, used on
the railroad wires. In a vague way I had heard of "quads," and imagined
I could work them as well as an "O. S." wire, but when he said for me to
sit down on the "Polar side," I was, for a minute, stumped. However,
there were already three chaps sitting at that table, so the fourth
place must be mine. I sat down and presently I heard the sounder say,
"Who?" I answered "BY," and then "HO," said, "Hr. City," I grabbed a pen
and made ready to copy, but by the time he had finished the address I
was just putting down the number and check. "Break" I said, "G. A.
from," B-r-r-r-r- how that sounder did jump. This interesting operation
was repeated several times, but finally I succeeded in getting the
message down, and then without giving me time to draw my breath, he
said, "C. N. D." and started ahead with a jargon of figures and words
that I had never heard of before. His sending was plain enough, in fact
it was like a circus bill, but I wasn't on to the combination, and it
was all Greek to me. Perspiration started from every pore, and in my
agony I said, "Break, G. A. Ahr.," Holy Smoke! how he did fly off at
that, and how those other three chaps did grin at my discomfiture.

"Call your chief operator over here," and with that he refused to work
with me any more. Clarke came over and that blasted chump at "HO" said,

"For heaven's sake give us an operator to do the receiving on the polar'
side of this quad. We are piled up with business and can't be delayed by
teaching the ropes to a railroad ham. He's been ten minutes taking one
message, and I haven't been able to pound into his head what a 'C. N.
D