Page:Hine (1904) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/94

 while making a good impression. You have to unlock the switch for some men before they can couple their crossings and get out of town. The dispatcher has to send the operator outside with a clearance. Acquaintance is one of a young man’s most valuable assets, and a two minutes’ interview may grade the way for a lifelong run. Before the world was as good as it is now, men rather prided themselves on the number of enemies they had made. Nowadays the friend mile is a more desirable unit of measure.

Washington Irving puts it very prettily where he says, “for who is there among us who does not like now and then to play the sage?” So I felt rather flattered when your chief dispatcher asked me for advice as to what to study in order to get on in the railway world. I told him first of all to read every bit of company literature that he could get hold of; not to skim through a part of the pamphlet on refrigerator cars and guess at the rest. A table of freight rates may become interesting if properly approached. Do not try to memorize data and statistics, but rather plod through them at least once with a view to trying to master the principles that