which should have gone to Hartford only you thought it a hardship the girls should call so long, and offered to take it yourself; but you were no hero in the eyes of the young man at Norwich to whom you sent that business at breakneck speed, to the infinite delight of your fair companion. She cordially despised that conceited youngster, who had gravitated from a country office to the “City on the Thames,” and who made life miserable for all who knew less of the tele graphic art than he. It was a very warm afternoon, but you made it warmer in the vicinity of the Plainfield wire, in Norwich office, than it was anywhere else on this terrestrial globe; and a certain aspiring operator went home that night with a very much smaller opinion of himself than he had entertained formerly. You yourself admitted that you had “tried to make it interesting for him.”

Finally tea time came, and Tip was invited to accompany his new found lady friend to the station agent’s house, where she boarded. He was coolly received, but with womanly adroitness she plied him with questions at table, and he had attentive listeners directly. After office hours he returned to the house, and during the evening, like Goldsmith’s travel-stained soldier, he shouldered his crutch, figuratively speaking, and told how fields were won. “You will be pleased to give Mr. McClosky a bed to-night, of course, Mr. Grandy,” said a persuasive female voice as the clock chimed ten; and Tip lay down that night in a clean, sweet bed, and slept as soundly, and rose as brisk and happy next morning, as if he owned the universe.

“You have an influential friend among us, my boy,” said Mr. Grandy during the forenoon. “I have been persuaded to find something for you to do. She says your misfortunes can not hide the fact that you are a gentleman and a wonderful operator.”

The next day Tip became a general utility man about the depot, and at the end of his first week he had demonstrated his fitness for better work and was appointed ticket-seller. When he left town, three months later, he said gravely to Mr. Grandy: “Good-by, and God bless you all, particularly my little operator friend. I should die if I staid here longer. I must have excitement, and I’ll find it among the military telegraphers beyond the Potomac. Yet I feel like crying at leaving here. I have been more respectable the past three months than I ever was before in my life; but the end has come—good-by!” And the steamboat train for Norwich, with Tip waving his handkerchief on the rear platform, dashed out of sight, and Plainfield knew him no more.

Let me conclude by giving one episode in Tip’s experience as a ticket-seller. His visit to Plainfield was made early in the sixties, when postal currency was scarce and silver change at a premium. Postage stamps were in general use for change at that time, and one day an inebriated and quarrelsome stranger called for a ticket for Hartford, tendering a bank-note. Tip stamped the ticket, and counting out about a dollar in postage stamps put them down with his hand over them to prevent the wind, which was blowing briskly, from scattering them to the four corners of the earth. He waited patiently a moment for the purchaser to take ticket and stamps, but the fellow was obstinate and held back. It was then that Tip raised his sheltering hand and cried, in a three card monte voice: “N-e-x-t gentleman.” Some of those postage stamps blew back into the office, others blew out of doors, and what became of the remainder of them is still a mystery. The purchaser finally succeeded in getting his ticket and one three cent stamp, and in getting very angry. Elbowing his way back to the window once more he bawled: “I want the rest of my change.” Leveling a look on him which would have tarnished the silver mountings on a steam fire engine, Tip shook his finger slowly before the fellow’s face, and said in measured accents: “Young man you have had your change once. Now if you don’t move away from here I’ll come out there and bust your crust.” The man looked at Tip for a moment only, and moved mournfully away. His regard for the safety of his “crust” kept him away, and, when his train arrived, he was the first man to board it. Ticket selling at Plainfield during the remainder of Tip’s stay went on peacefully and without let or hindrance.

Mr. McClosky had made his record.