The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-25

TIHE case of John Caldwell is re-
 ferred with due respect to pr. Will.
 | liam osler According to the doc tors .dictum, if d man has not made success by the time he is 40 he is hopeless and should be chloroformed. Caldwell was 40 and was telegraph operator at a way station in Canada. To be telegraph operator at way station in the United States is bad enough, but at a way sta- ton in Canadal That is the limit
 There are lot of men like Caldwell. He was born on farm, and had fair education. He had been a. clerk in country store, and after a time had store of his own. He was a good clerk, but a poor storekeeper, and he failed That failure seemed to have blighting effect upon him for years. It did not mat ter what he turned his hand to, the re- suit seemed to be the same Then he drifted into railroading. From clerk ship that paid only a trifing salary he was promoted to station agent. He was not much of a telegrapher, but good enough for the job Once or twice a day he got a train order, Three or four times a day he got a commercial telegram Most of his duties were in relation to freight shipments, making out way bills and the like. There were two passenger trains day and he had a few tickets to sell and now and then bit of baggage to check. The work was not much and the pay was. not much-sS5 month, but for while he was content. Some men are satisfied with little.
 It is hard to be content on s35 month, however, when your family is increasing and your. expenses keep growing. Know ing of no better way to improve his condi- tion Caldwell rented a patch of ground near the station and raised garden truck and small vegetables, which he sent into Toronto for sale. This helped, but it meant a lot of hard work. Even gar den patch requires lot of attention If Il is going to return a decent proht, and to Caldwell, as he worked at the station and worked in the field, it seemed as If It was little better than slavery The world, so far as he was concerned, appeared to be bounded by the division of the road on which his station was located The town he lived in was small and the people mar row. There were few diversions and no settlements. Season followed season without materially changing the aspect of Caldwell's life. There was dreary sameness and monotony about it all that sometimes made him bewail his fate.
 Earlier in life he had all the illusions all the keen ambitions of youth. Some times he thought if he had not made that one miserable failure, or if he had another chance, he would make success of things but from these dreams he had to come back to the stern reality of the train orders, the waybills, the commer- cial teIegrams, the sale of tickets, the checking of baggage and the raising of potatoes, cabbages strawberries and oth- CT stuff.
 For F years Caldwell was agent at that little waysde station, and then one day he chanced upon an advertisement of a type writer in one of the magazines The type writer was more of novelty then than 1t is now and that advertisement set off the merits of that particular machine in ardent phrases. Caldwell had read all sorts of advertisements in all sorts Of publications with scant interest, but somehow this one appealed to him par ticularly. Why it was he cannot explain even now Maybe the fact that so many telegraphers were taking to use the type writer had something to do with it. This machine was new and was being intro duced by a New York company. Agents were wanted.
 Caldwell read and reread the ad and then wrote to the New York people. He told, plainly and simply, of his position