So the fellow who skirmishes for the weak road has a hard time of it in these piping days. Passenger traffic, like kissing, seems to go by favor nowadays; and how hard the travelling passenger agent works to curry that favor! He drops off a local at some way-station, there is a smile and perhaps a cigar for the country-boy who sells tickets there, for the Interstate folk have not sent any one to prison yet for offering either a smile or a cigar. The T. P. A. knows that the local agent cannot, under the rules that govern him, recommend routes that connect with and extend beyond the line which gives him employment. Still, sometime the country agent may be approached by a man who demands that a connecting road be suggested for him, and the T. P. A. can see that man, without even shutting his eyes. If the country agent will only remember the nice T. P. A. that the Transcontinental sent in there a month before, and the good kind of cigars he dispenses, the Transcontinental may get a part of the haul on a long green ticket. Perhaps the man will be taking his wife, and there will be two of the long green tickets. Perhaps there will be a whole party to be routed over the Transcontinental--the T. P. A. can imagine almost anything as he swings overland in the dreary locals from way-station to way-station.
Sometimes a wire from his chief quickly changes his schedule. The Magnificent Knights of the Realm--or some other impressive order of that sort--are to hold their annual convention at Oshkosh, and the T. P. A. must hustle down to Bingtown to see that Transcontinental gets the haul of the delegation that will go to Oshkosh from the bustling little community. He scurries into Bingtown to locate the officers of the local lodge of the M. K. O. R. there. On the train there may be a T. P. A. from some rival system--they are all partners in misery. The Transcontinental man will probably drop off the opposite side of the train at Bingtown from the crowded depot platform--it's an old trick of the T. P. A.--and be tearing over the pages of the Bingtown directory before that train is out of town again. Once located, the officers of that lodge of M. K. O. R. must be pleasantly instructed in the advantages of Transcontinental--the speed of its trains, the safety of its operation, the convenience of its terminals, the scenic splendors along the way, the excellence of its dining-car service; all these things are spun with convincing eloquence by the travelling passenger agent.