Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-12-17
THE STATION AGENT
A RAILROAD MAN WHO HAS MANY
 DUTIES TO PERFORM.

A Fb1InONO MAN WF1O F1FNO mFAiS5
 DUTIES TO PERFORM.
 His Pathway-A Man of All Work
 Romantic Side of the Agents Life.
 Urbanity.
 The term 'sstation agent" means. practi- cally, the person in charge of a small or medium sized station. When one of these men is promoted to the charge of large city station, either freight or passenger, he be- comes really a local superintendent, his duties then consisting very largely in the supervis- ion of an army of clerks and laborers, who must, each in his place, be as capable as the agent himself The agent at small station has great multiplicity of duties to perform. He must sell tickets, be a good bookkeeper and a faithful switchtender. He generally must be telegraph operator and must be vigorous physically. He must be ready, like the conductor, to submit to some abuse from ill bred customers, and should be the peer of the business men of his town. He often en- counters almost as great variety of knotty problems as the superintendent himself, though he has the advantage that he can generally turn them over to a superior if he feels unequal to them. Tho practical diff1- culties that most bcset him are those incident to doing everything in hurry. People who buy tickets wait until the train is about to start before presenting themselves at the office.
 Then the agent has dozen other things to attend to and must, therefore, detect coun- terfeit $10 bills with the expertness of a Washington treasury clerk. Just as a train reaches his station the train dispatcher's oli io o,1I ho1, Ip0rN everything and receive flor the conductor) telegram in which an error of single word would very likely involve the lives of pas sengers. At very small station the check ing of baggage devolves on the agent, his over burdened back being thus loaded with one more straw.
 A MAN-OF-ALL-woRK.
 He is in many cases agent for the express company, and so must count, seal, super scribe and way bill money packages and handle oyster kegs and barrels of beer at @ moments notice. Women with wagon loads of loose household effects to go by freight and shippers of carloads of cattle, for which a car must be specially fitted up, will appear just as the distracted station man is receiv- ing a telegram with one side of his brain and selling ticket with the other The house. hold goods must be weighed and tagged, the sewing machine tied up and tables repaired l; the cattle shipper must be given a short lec- ture on the legal bearings of the bargain for transportation which he is about to make, and his demand that his live stock shall be carried 500 miles more quickly than human animals are taken over the same road is to be gently repressed. It is not every day that small station is enlivened by this sort of excitement, yet 1t is common, and is familiar to every station agent
 The variety in the duties of this position is, however, a great advantage to the am bilious young man, because it serves to give him good lift toward a valuable business education. He can learn about the methods and knacks and tricks of many different kinds of business and can profit by the knowledge thus gained. Thomas J. Potter, the lately deceased vice president of the Union Pacific railway, whose memory it Is proposed to perpetuate by bronze statue, began his railroad career as agent at small station in Iowa. Others of equal ability and perfection of character have risen from similar places and by the same means THE ROMANTIC SIDE.
 | The agent at a small station catches his breath between trains. There is then gener. ally ample time for calming the nerves and preparing for the next onslaught. If he is @ telegraph operator he can chat with the | operators at other stations-a common re source if the wires are not occupied with more important affairs. In the class period icals of operators and railroad men, refer ences to this phase of their life may be con stantly seen, and incidents of even romantic interest are not infrequent. Many of the men at small stations are young and un married, while at places where the bushes: has increased enough to warrant the employ ment of an assistant, 8 young woman to dc the telegraphing is frequently the first helper engaged. With this combination it is un necessary to tell what follows. If iron bar and stone walls are the things which Cupic laughs at, an electric telegraph wire is tn, thing which makes him ''snicker right out, if we may use the language of the circus ring
 At the railroad station next larger in size the work is more divided One man sell tickets, another attends to the freight office another to the baggage, and so on. Th' ticket seller must make 5 cent bargain with the same urbanity that is given to S100 trade, and must be able to toss off th latter in two minutes if occasion requires O to spend an hour in helping the passenge choose the best route among a score of possi ble ones. The fusillade of questions tha must be met by the ticket seller every tim he opens his window is familiar to every on who has ever watched a place of the kind fC ten minutes.-B. B. Adams, Jr., in Scribner' Magazine.
 Gen. Sheridan's Trip to Europe.
 Before left Chicago the newspapers wer