The trail of the swinging lanterns

When Mademoiselle Susanna Vere de Vere, haughty and capricious, talcumed and beflounced, rides east at 10:00 a.m., ensconsced in green plushed parlor car comfort, think you she recognizes as she rolls along, the significance of the irregular hedge that flanks for miles her chosen pathway? Can she see in that jagged sky line of uneven box car roofs, so unlike the matched uniformity of the coral beads in her necklace—the source of the revenue which purchased the ornament? Probably not. Does Oliver Opulence across the isle, with fattening jowls and the latest periodical, attribute his golfing privileges and bank balance to the agency of the lowly freight car? No, not in the fullest measure.

The routine duties of John Jones Limited in to-day’s strenuous commercial struggle are based entirely on what freight service has done or will accomplish for them, and during conferences with their purchasing and traffic assistants, concrete equipment needs are dealt with daily but the vital usefulness of each empty car as a retainer and carrier are thought of only in an abstract way, yet they are as essential as the “G.T.R.” or three daily meals. Not until such time as the advent of an industrial calamity that will destroy them all, leaving coal man, merchant and bacon baron stranded high and dry, will shippers unanimously appreciate their individual worth, and not until then will cease the desire of corporate interests to haul their valuable loads along this or that favored highway of steel. Not a pulley in manufacture could turn without their direct aid, meagre would be the housewives’ meals and pelts again be their children’s portion if the wheels refused to whirr: then indeed, would Mademoiselle Susanna Vere de Vere understand the sudden death of Pullman palaces from commercial paralysis.

A tortuous string of seventy freight cars in motion is not what you would designate as a “harmonious whole” in appearance. They remind you of a herd of elephants with baggy pants traveling trunk to tail, nor do these incongruous, ill-at-ease assortments of traffic proletariat pick their company. The tall and the short, the lame, the halt and the blind they have always with them, and if a trig, shiny aristocrat once, costing approximately $1,200 to $1,500, (but to-day twice as much) that should be on his owner’s tracks, strays into line with this perambulating Coxey’s Army he soon gets the spots knocked off him, like a “rookie” enlisted with the regulars. They all receive awful treatment, they are side tracked, snubbed and roughly handled and though doctored, patched, likewise overburdened, they return more good for evil by feeding mice and men and machinery than any other medium. The funniest feature about these democratic go-betweens is that a loose jointed, squatty old party, rocking from side to side with the load in his protruding stomach and hardly able to keep step with the tribe, may have his “innards” stuffed with silks and satins to bedeck some slavish goddess of fashion who never appreciates what ship brought the feathers and finery to port—and such is human nature.

However, the officials of every railroad company from the president, traffic manager and “G.F.A.”, down the ladder to the journal oilers, make recompense, court the freight cars and strive mightily for the privilege of transporting their variegated contents and these are the men who make them make millions. It is a game with far reaching ramifications, a contest of competitors where brains and dispatch, service, sentiment and cold figures diversify the play. Some times it is as uncertain and exciting as draw poker with a brazen bluff cropping up, but the line that can deliver the goods usually scores and gathers in the ducats. The nets are out every hour of the twenty-four and they are out at every important geographical centre on the continent, making the sport in variety and complexion, more devoid of monotony than most mundane pursuits.

Traffic men seek every commodity from a carload of lemonade straws to a shipment of zinc dust from Japan for the Porcupine Mines, they talk on every topic from tunnel clearances to the effect of the Budget, and have interviewed specimens of the genus homo as yet uncharted by the phrenologists. They study tact and diplomacy, but few have equalled the art of a Manitoba farmer whom it has been said, kept himself in coal for the winter by making faces at the passing “C.P.R.” firemen and engineers. Customers’ wishes, siding accommodation, enclosures, cartage, part lots, classification, temperature, icing and a thousand other conditions influence the movement. Among freight men resourcefulness is an ever present adjunct in devising ways and means to enlist adherence, placate the public, overcome delay and get around an obstacle, recalling the expedient of a new shedman who was puzzled as to how he could load in the “way” car a piece of crated machinery too large for the door. He resorted to the alternative of removing the casing, then easily transferring the unwieldly consignment inside and after recrating, left the later problem to the man who would deliver the goods.

“Work well begun is half done” saith the old saw, and the sage was right. Starting on a few calls some pleasant morning with the outside atmosphere exhilarating, if your initial visit happens on one of those considerate, business gentlemen who can devote three to thirty minutes of his time to your mission, and concluding the X.Y.Z. road might be worse, promises a share of the traffic he has offering, you usually approach the balance of the day’s duties with optimism. Experiences multiply, but this feeling will probably carry you past the resentful individual who holds a little stock of your Company and refuses business because his security is temporarily dropping and it will likewise help to cement acquaintance with the cautious man who would like to but fears his couple of cars would be held up or lost should Canada and the United States drift into war. Emboldened to continue the good work, you harken to the complaints of one of your local agents, both officious and secretive—who sends all his correspondence in under separate cover and wonders why it don’t receive prompt attention when the chief is away. If diminuitive this representative might become a detriment and antagonize trade and his running mate is the agent appointed by the operating department who proves a thorn in the flesh of the Division Freight Agent by snarling, rat-terrier, dictatorial demeanor until the shipping body in unanimous resolution declare “that agent cannot leave quick enough to suit me”. Hot on the heels of the visiting “D.F.A.”, who is supposed by many to always have an easy time, bobs up an obsequious Hebrew at the period of great car shortage, with a tale of woe about a man coming upon him just as he was loading a few bales and shouting “Here, what are you doing with my car?” It developed that the blusterer could not procure a car himself and bethought him to pounce on the inoffensive rag man and purloin the coveted empty box car.

Fortified by an agreement with an anxious fresh fruit buyer, whereby he is guaranteed forty refrigerator cars in return for their haul homeward a few hundred miles, a call is made on a canned salmon distributor. This is his acknowledgment to your opening salute. “Who told you I had a car of salmon? I have no salmon and am not thinking of fish just now—this isn’t Friday”. However, he proved amenable to reason and issued a routing order.

A Grand Trunk Railway commercial agent related to me recently the following outline of a verbal castigation administered to himself by a mourner who must have been wearing indigo spectacles: “The idea of giving business to ‘U.M.C.’ lines, we’ll have no truck or trade with them. It is very indiscreet of you to dare to try; when you can compete on an equal basis with the ‘C.P.R.’ then come in”. A well intentioned, but premature overture earned one young general agent, new to his territory, an undeserved rebuke in response to his civil enquiries: “Well, I guess I hav’nt anything to say to you to-day”.

“I came in primarily to ask you to take luncheon with me, would you join me at one o’clock?”

“No, I had my lunch at the proper hour” came the quick rejoinder. Fortunately, the balance of the day was spent among “white men” of whom there are 95 per cent. naturally inclined to transact business with reason and decency, and their broad guage tendency seems to expand in proportion to the magnitude and responsibility of their undertakings.

Another gentleman occasioned a good deal of laughter telling on himself the story of taking his new chief on an introductory tour and being embarrassed to learn that the first manufacturer they called on had been dead for a year, and the second one, whom our friend knew to some extent, asking him what his name was. It takes time to talk away or live down these little incidents. Now and then a modest shipper with about one car a year traveling in your direction, will unblushingly suggest that he be loaned one of your annual passes for a little trip down to New York, and I recall hearing of a wallet of transportation, in the wrong hands, being lost in the railway yards near Rochester.

A number of the boys remember certain shippers who have had an insatiable longing for some substantial token in reciprocity for the traffic they could control, with a leaning towards a variety of household furnishings and what-nots.

Patronage lists and their influence, if operative the wrong way, are often the invention of the evil one and nullify the efforts of a conscientious worker, otherwise in good standing with all parties. One day Billy A——, General Freight Agent of the Canadian Pacific Railway, called with a traveling representative on a certain undesignated Canadian biscuit factory: out came the list with the statement of the egregious young manager that “Your road is not using our product on its diners.”

“Well,” promptly responded the truthful William, “It may be they are not good enough”.

To elaborate further, a contractor erecting a building in a distant city for a firm doing a large outfitting and general selling business, routed twelve carloads of structural steel that he required, via the “P.D.Q.R.” A wide awake, aggressive competitor coveted the haul of the material and meant to have it. They promptly placed an $80,000 order for hotel requisites with the outfitting firm and the latter, feeling the pressure where it was intended to be felt, capitulated, assuaged the contractor’s rising ire in a monetary but lesser degree, which, of course, jilted the expectations of the “P.D.Q.R.”

A competing line with heavy purchasing appropriations has been known to often frustrate genuine tonnage hopes by wiring that the name of a shipper interested in a transaction, be removed from their patronage lists unless he immediately saw the error of his ways and banished consideration for a rival route or an M.P., in Victoria, B.C., we’ll say, may exert some influence he may have and busy himself by telegraphing to forward specific public works supplies from the east this way or that.

The staff of a district freight department may do considerable preparatory work regarding, for instance, the movement of Australian and New Zealand wool for Europe to find their plans upset by a necessary war-time embargo affecting the transport of sheep skins and crossbred wool through this port or that country.

The bete noir of all railroad men is the shifty, unprincipled person who deceives you with a misleading yarn and means to do something else. A sample of this method of operating is outlined in the case following, and concerns a carload of pianos going from an Ontario town to Vancouver, B.C. Knowing his man, the consignee had telegraphed and also written the shippers “Route our car now loading ‘N.C.O. & B.R.R.’: under no circumstances deviate, pay no attention to other instructions, this is final.” To dull the watchfulness of the interested railways, Ananias declared the shipment would be held pending the arrival from elsewhere of an enclosure of four pianos, meanwhile laboring secretly to dispatch the complete shipment in the interim contrary to instructions. Temporarily balked in his fell purpose, to disarm suspicion when interrogated, he actually ordered placed on his siding a suitable car as a screen or camouflage, but pursued his original plan. Not until repeatedly disciplined by the head office did this factory manager desist and finally unload the forbidden car and obey orders. Such an employee is a stumbling block to progressive business.

Disappointments and neck and neck finishes are frequent, but variety is the spice and fascinating magnet in railroading life and when shrewd manufacturers repudiate narrowness by distributing the plums among a number, “We fell on their necks with loud cries”, as handsome Jack McGuire of the “C.P.R.” would say. These incidents are reminiscent of a whiskey traveler who alleges he interviewed at Chicago the superintendent of dining cars for a well known railroad. To quote his own words “I paid proper attention to my personal appearance, wore my Persian lamb-skin coat and anticipated an order”. Contrary to expectations, however, the interview fell flat, no contract was made and for years after, this crestfallen liquor man went out of his way to divert his company’s shipments away from that line via other channels, to the discomfiture of railway men in no way responsible and notwithstanding the fact that the offending Dining Car Superintendent stoutly contended it was not his road but another that was unappreciative or stocked with rye. Speaking of the commissariat department, George Tootle, the widely known dining car waiter on the G.T.R.’s famous International Limited train, who thinks lunch counters breed nervousness and indigestion, relates observing at Chicago the following:—

A “hayseedy” looking man with field mice jumping out of his whiskers, walked up to the lunch counter, seated himself on a stool, placed his bright-colored carpet bag on the next stool and partook of a hearty lunch. He passed the young man a $1 bill to take out the price of his lunch, 50 cents, and was surprised when the youth said: “Not any change, sir; your carpet bag occupied a seat, and we must collect for that.”

The old man looked dazed for a second only, and then replied:

“All right, my boy”, and opening the bag, exclaimed, “Old carpet bag, I have paid for your lunch and you shall have it.”

Quicker than a flash he threw in a mince pie, a plate of doughnuts and several sandwiches, and departed amid the shouts of everyone in the station.

One does not mind unintentionally stumbling on a hasty eruption in temper of a decent chap who has just found five of his letters opened by intent or on the part of a careless firm with a similar name, but we would rather not be granted an audience with an apple exporter who fathers four hundred barrels of fruit lying on the dock at Halifax ready for a ship’s hold at the psychological moment when an inspector condemns the lot because the centres are filled with undersized apples.

Tenacity of purpose and “Never say die”—which compel results—are well exemplified by a happening that came to my notice some years ago, involving two cars of shoes which were routed and definitely promised to one trans-continental line. A rival corporation sent a city solicitor after them without securing the footwear. The city freight agent then essayed the task with like success. Undaunted the “D.F.A.” was the next to try, but the shipper remaining firm stuck to his guns when the fourth application was made in the person of the freight traffic manager. The news spread and on Wednesday evening of that week, when the gentleman who shewed such valor in defending his citadel of shoe leather, to the accompaniment of the silent prayers of the party of the first part, called at the president’s residence to visit his daughter, the denouement hung fire no longer. A word, under such circumstances from the high official proved sufficient and the loser then understood the quotation, “An idol but with feet of clay.”

An active traveling agent and irresistible business getter told me once of a prominent London firm promising him a carload if he would remain absent for six months, of another who suggested “Sell some goods for us and we will favor your route,” while the third—an old ‘Q’ employee who claimed the ‘Q’ was a large family—looking at his watch, said “Wait twenty minutes.” Waiting twenty minutes is a nerve-racking ordeal that also affects a gentleman’s prestige and a better method of procedure would be to pre-arrange a meeting out of deference to the demands on busy people’s time. It is awkward, after traveling some distance for the purpose, to find on meeting the member of Messrs. Frett & Growl Limited, that he will not meet your eye, will not shew signs of animation, but with head down apparently saving his breath for a long distance race, terminates the interview in melancholy with “No!”

There was a traffic official in an eastern metropolis some years ago, representing a fine railroad but kept in the chair by other people’s financial power, who was notorious for that stealthy, furtive habit of fumbling with his papers without looking up, as though fearful his eyes would convict him of his sins against men.

In the category of queer ones could be listed the eccentric who accosted a friend of mine, now doing trustworthy executive work for the government railways, with “What, you here again?”

“Just for three minutes, Sir, to place a routing order!” “You won’t be here a minute, I’m too busy. I can’t be bothered by you and your routing order; it isn’t worth the paper it is written on.” With people like this unmuzzled and at large, can you wonder at the increase in crime.

Another good acquaintance who was invited to an inner office to unburden his mind and concisely recited the nature of his business without molestation, was dumbfounded when finished to observe the creature before him, without parley, touch a buzzer, summon a servitor and request him to “Shew this gentleman out.” What would you rather do than live with him? Some men’s physical boundaries and narrow-minded outlook are so small and contemptible that if a mosquito laid out a nine hole golf course on their torso he would be crowded for room.

A decade or so ago there dwelt in a town an hour’s ride east of Toronto, an individual like a ruffled grouse who thought to slay his interviewer summarily with “What you tell me goes in one ear and out the other,” as he made a personally conducted tour to the door. Quickly came the retort courteous: “I am not surprised Mr. —— there is nothing there to stop it.”

Now comes that robust type that would probably not wince when getting it back in kind if his antagonist could fittingly measure up to his standard in words and deeds. Picture the horned and forbidding monster, swollen with pride of place, who greets the caller as though he were going to swallow him whole and allow his gastric juice to do the rest: “Well, your company has one H— of a nerve to send you out here asking me for business: you built a station, some big contracts were let, but you were all looking out of the window when I wanted a slice,” finishing with a coup de grace, “What have you got to say about that?” His caller replied, “I guess our management took a leaf out of your book; how much of your business have we handled in the past ten years, tell me that? We learn to know who our friends are and when we have some favors to place we don’t hurry with them on a platter to the people who forget our route, but try to remember those who realize that if we are lucky we run a train or two about once a week out west.” The lengths to which some folks will go to make personal a neutral issue is astonishing. A man who had been employed in Chicago by a firm that could not prevail on the “C. & A.” to give them an order, came to Canada to work for an Ontario industry and expressed his intention to gratify that grudge by witholding shipments of the new employer from the railway he had placed under the ban.

The book of boors will admit of one more entry, being a letter I have permission to reproduce, which was addressed to one snob by a conscientious and sensitive young agent who has since transferred his energies to another channel.

form the subject of this communication and are exactly the text and sense of part of two conversations which occurred between you and myself—involuntarily on my part—and only because I was acting on orders while in the capacity of an employee of a “U.S.A.” railway seeking a share of the routing of the freight traffic you purchased in the United States or shipped westward, and which, unfortunately, you controlled.

No longer situated where behavior and language like yours has opportunity to grievously test the patience of myself, (and several others), permit me to allude to the impression you create.

When people of your calibre, quite devoid of consideration and finesse, receive a business proposition with a verbal attack couched in the tone and vernacular of your moulding shop, they are, no doubt, running true to form, but they take refuge behind the assumption that there is no one to question their attitude.

In doing so they indulge in a cowardly advantage over gentlemen who, by the nature of their employment, from president down, always have to remember the officials higher up; remember also, that in giving free rein to their human resentment, they may be rewarded with a letter of complaint, half true and half garbled, sent in by some cad to an officer disloyal enough to first believe the outsider.

Reflect on how disconcerted your son might feel were he to experience the misfortune of meeting a sour tempered individual like yourself when first coming in contact with the commercial public. He could not do himself justice nor serve you well.

The proverb says “One cannot make a silken purse out of a sow’s ear,” and although it is difficult to rebuild what the man in the street characterizes as a “rough neck,” it is never too late to mend.

The isolated class referred to are known by representatives of all businesses and are tacitly ostracized when the army of decent fellows is being discussed.

“Please heed the handwriting on the wall”

That man was “misfit” who should have been polishing apples for a Greek—to quote Jack Rose, an original wit.

After bidding adieu to the friendly personage who has accepted a mild cigar, but uncontented, megaphones to a couple of others at the rear in this wise, “Here Jake and Eddie, get in on the cigars,” our conversation in the “smoker” again reverted to pianos and things harmonious and cheerful. Genial M. T. Case recounted how fire, while in transit, ruined a carload of pianos when en route the west and the firm’s western manager, a believer in long odds, filed a claim for reimbursement, itemizing the instruments at $500 each. When the railway company received the billet doux they blinked and may have said “For the love of Mike” or something less classical and affectionate. However, as soon as the firms attention was drawn to the amount of the claim the manager, with good judgment, clipped $200 off each piano and a prompt settlement was arranged.

Only a few months ago an organized band of box car and freight shed thieves stole nine pianos and four phonographs from one railway company in a large city, and to date six had been recovered. Claims arising from damage, delay, theft, loss and wrecks are traffic men’s enemies that play the mischief and filter through all departments to the chief legal authorities. Of late years the railway companies have been stimulated to eternal vigilance in order to combat daring robbers with confederate organization quite far reaching and involving from twenty to forty people within the ranks of employees and outside. Such a gang is said to have stolen from one company in four months goods valued at $35,000, comprising candy, cameras, sugar, liquors, musical instruments and clothing. The investigation departments have recovered from beneath hay stacks not far from Toronto, Canada, for instance, forty suits of underwear and a dozen pairs of ladies high suede boots. Imagine the temerity of the men making off with twenty head of sheep from under the eyes of yardmen and special officers. The public press not long ago chronicled details of the loss of fifteen sacks of flour from one car en route Buffalo to Belleville. Whiskey is an outstanding temptation and many a headache that starts rolling fails to join the soda waiting at the other end. Out of a thirty case consignment from further west, making the one night journey from St. Thomas to Black Rock, there checked fifteen cases missing, lock, stock and barrel—the wood only of four cases remained and eleven cases were intact. Unmerited onus for losses is now and then thought to rest with the railroads which enquiry does not substantiate. A well known firm in the congested wholesale zone of a neighboring city engaged a detective who pussy-footed about the premises for a year without locating a leak. This human bloodhound may have had a cold in his head and was a poor scenter as it was developed later that the shortages were manipulated as a side line by a vinegar mill shipper who got away with also $6,000 of the hardened cider—mostly recovered—and had been supplying a small pickle factory through the medium of a carter who drove up daily for kegs.

Railway companies very seldom pilfer, but the action of more than one railroad on this continent in appropriating urgently needed steam coal billed to others during the winters of 1917–18, will prepare the reader’s viewpoint for a claim for reimbursement placed in the hands of the Silverplate Road, covering fifty cars of slack coal, lost and being vigorously traced, which that line had seized and hastily dumped into a big washout cavity.

Whitewashing coal would seem to be a labor as unheard of as washing the spots off the leopard, yet, says the Saturday Evening Post, that apparently crazy scheme is carried out by some western railroads. The coal is whitewashed, not for aesthetic reasons, but simply to prevent theft in transit. Before a car of coal starts on its journey the top layers are sprayed with limewater, which leaves a white coating on each lump of black coal after the water evaporates. The removal of even a small quantity from that whitewashed layer is immediately detected, so that the exact junction or station at which the theft occurred can be noticed.

Once upon a time when many boys were investigating the fallacy of the supposed transformation of a black horse hair into a snake after nine days sojourn in the rain barrel, a loaded oil tank car was glued to the rails in Detroit yards, but urgently needed on the other side of the international boundary. Giving a clear receipt, a connecting line hooked on to it, but almost immediately finding the tank in a leaking condition because the discharge pipe had been snapped in a rough shunt, they shot it back to the original carriers. The latter were on guard and refused it, the tank in the meantime losing 200 gallons of oil. To aggravate matters, a third railway whose office was to deliver the shipment, looked askance at the “cripple” and thus both exits were closed. Despite the pleadings of the consignees for the oil, the middle line holding the “white elephant” turned to them a deaf ear until a settlement would be made. After much fencing and correspondence an adjustment on a mileage basis was arrived at. The road accepting the “bad order” tank was held liable for a proportion gauged by a thirty mile haul, and the comparatively innocent delivering company, being ten miles longer, drew a debit of $4,000.

The interpretation of a maze of tariff rates and a thousand lights and shadows affecting their application, as well as classification, deadlocks regarding analogous goods perplex and keep bright the wits of railway people, that the responsibility may be placed where it should rest. To elucidate this remark let me refer in passing, to a partly demented and very undependable dealer in a commodity that was barrelled—long since gone to his reward—who requested and obtained a quotation on a specific shipment of twenty cars, each to contain a stated number of barrels, which were to be of agreed size and weight. He then had made a larger barrel, forwarded the product in them and, of course, when weighed a heavy undercharge claim developed, the carriers holding the short end.

Different from this was the experience of a car of eastbound California oranges traveling via the gorges and canyons of a Rocky Mountain railway. A broken axle precipitated trouble in the middle of the train which threw the “cripple” out of alignment and in shorter time than is consumed in relating it, the down-grade impetus and pressure wrenched it free throwing the disabled car clear. It fell to the bottom of the gorge, the automatic couplers linked the drawheads of the separated halves of the train and no one was wiser until the following springtime freshets uncovered the debris at the base of a cliff, clearing up a mystery for the checkers and claim department.

Sparks from passing locomotives do widespread damage to crops and fencing and a battalion of agents are continually engrossed with personal injury matters and destruction of stock. A car of expensive western steers was recently heading eastward to the seaboard when early in the morning prairie grass in the racks of troughs igniting from sparks started a blaze. Being under way, the crew did not detect the trouble at once but, on learning the danger, they raced to the water tank at Ingersoll. Before the water was reached a draw bar pulled out and broke setting the emergency brakes hard, jolting the train to a sudden stop. Fifteen head of the cattle were found roasted to death and three jumped from the car and ran amuck crazed with blisters and the intense heat. Railroading is not all profit. Some days you cannot lay up a cent. The following true story is apropos:—

“How many cows have you now?” inquired the visitor.

“Eight,” replied Farmer Corntossel, discontentedly; “all comin’ home reg’lar every night to make work for somebody.”

“I understand two of your neighbor’s cows got hit by railway trains last week.”

“Yep. An’ he got cash fur ’em, too. I don’t see how that feller trains his cattle not to shy at a locomotive.”—Washington Star.

When the public magnifies the cash returns from ticket sales and freight traffic it has not an accurate conception of the immense sums paid out annually by the railway companies for the adjustment of even small claims. Traffic Manager Adam Scott of the F. W. Woolworth Company, with eighty-five stores in Canada, was instrumental in having authorized during the past fiscal year $16,000 in vouchers issued to write off small claims on less than carload shipments of glassware and crockery. This firm controls nine hundred and ninety-eight stores in America and the sums involved in this phase of profit and loss must be immense.

On one occasion the Great Northern Railway wrote the Heinz Pickle Company, Leamington, Ont., regarding the collection of an undercharge amounting to $40.09, which arose from an error in prepaying the freight charges on a carload shipped to Vancouver, B.C. The Pickle Company’s Traffic Manager, at Pittsburg, Pa., working in accordance with the Inter-state Commerce Act Rules, promptly acknowledged the liability in an elaborate statement, with cheque, assuring the railway company that the correct amount of the discrepancy was, on further investigation, found to be $80.45. In other days we all knew some people who would have gasped at such an evidence of gratuitous fair dealing, but to quote from William Shakespeare, the listener would be fit for “treason, stratagem and spoils” whose risibilities are not tickled with a recital of the claim of a cautious old sexton, made on the Canadian Northern Railway at Winnipeg for two funeral tollings at $2 each which he would have received had the railway delivered the expected church bell in time. And so the old world and the amusing people on it, with their pleasantries and foibles, roll across the stage of every-day existence.