Page:Hine (1904) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/190

 superintendent and general superintendent. He is, by nature, a student; no task is too onerous to dismay him if there is in it or behind it something he can learn. Thus he has not only stored away information, but he has learned how to impart it, and his fund of shrewd observation and good common sense he has drawn on in writing a railroad book entitled “Letters From an Old Railway Official to His Son, a Division Superintendent.”

The letters cover a breadth of ground in railway operation that is really astonishing to any one who does not know the man behind them. This is not all; loaded as they are with nuggets of hard, practical sense in railroad practice, they have a form and finish that make them doubly attractive. They are short, compact, of an easy and agreeable style and both lively and humorous as well as instructive.

Major Hine has long since won his literary spurs as a contributor to the Army and Navy Journal, The Railway Age and The Century Magazine. His present book is bright, quick and gossipy, and it would interest a man that did not know the difference between a puzzle switch and a gravity yard, but its especial