goes forward out on the line. Under the direction of one of the grizzled
autocrats he first comes in contact with actual patrons--comes to know
their personalities and their peculiarities. Also, he comes to know the
full meaning of that overused and abused word--service. After all, here
is the full measure of the job. He is a servant. He must realize that.
And as a servant he must perfect himself. He must rise to the countless
opportunities that will come to him each night he is on the run. He must
do better--he must anticipate them.

Take such a man as Eugene Roundtree, who has been running a smoking car
on one of the limited trains between New York and Boston for two
decades--save for that brief transcendent hour when Charles S. Mellen
saw himself destined to become transportation overlord of New England
and appropriated Roundtree for a personal servant and porter of his
private car. Roundtree is a negro of the very finest type. He is a man
who commands respect and dignity--and receives it. And Roundtree, as
porter of the Pullman smoker on the Merchants' Limited, has learned to
anticipate.

He knows at least five hundred of the big bankers and business men of
both New York and Boston--though he knows the Boston crowd best. He
knows the men who belong to the Somerset and the Algonquin Clubs--the
men who are Boston enough to pronounce Peabody "Pebbuddy." And they know
him. Some of them have a habit of dropping in at the New Haven ticket
offices and demanding: "Is Eugene running up on the Merchants'
to-night?"

"It isn't just knowing them and being able to call them by their names,"
he will tell you if you can catch him in one of his rarely idle moments.
"I've got to remember what they smoke and what they drink. When Mr.