Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/290



isn't much use in talking about the logical or the illogical when you come to couple up with a man's hobby, because a hobby is a hobby and that's all there is to it with nothing left to be said on the subject. Most men have a hobby. McQueen's was coal—just coal.

McQueen talked coal with a persistence that was amazing. On all occasions and under any pretext it was coal. Was he off schedule with a regularity that entailed his presence on the carpet before the division superintendent, it was coal. Did he break down between meeting-points with the attendant result that the dispatchers fretted and fumed and swore as they readjusted their schedules and rearranged their train sheets, it was coal. Everlastingly and eternally coal.

"What's coal?" McQueen would demand oracularly. "It's carbon and oxygen and hydrogen with a dash of nitrogen, ain't it? Well, then, what are you talking about? Coal ain't just coal, some of it's mostly slate. Two hundred and ten pounds all the way, all the time, with the grate bars cluttered with that, huh! What?"

No purchasing agent that had ever hit the division