heavy-shouldered, amiable of his broad countenance, shrewd of eye, and growing thin of that curly brown thatch which had been one of Hibernia's gifts to his ensemble, he surveyed the scene with a critic's air.
Not that Mitchell scorned the pundits of learning. Being the vice-president of a transcontinental line of railroad and therefore necessarily a man of wide acquaintance and of wide employment of the talents of mankind, he knew there were occasions when even he must wait upon the pronouncements of some spectacled creature of the laboratory. Still, he could not help reflecting that he would like to see that pale, gangling pundit on the end try to calculate the exact instant in which to throw the lever to make a flying switch. He would like further to see that fellow with a dome that loomed like a water-tank on the desert try to pick up a string of car numbers as they ran by him on the track, and see how many he could carry in his head and carry right.
In fact, everything about the function expressed itself to Mitchell in terms of traffic. Quite a hall, this. The seats in it came from Grand Rapids, no doubt; or perhaps from Manitowoc. The rate from Grand Rapids was nineteen cents a hundred or thereabouts; from Manitowoc it was twenty,—practically an even basis. But on a transcontinental haul now, to San Francisco for instance, common point rates applied, and Manitowoc had an advantage of five cents a hundred unless—unless the Michigan roads rebated the Michigan manufacturers something of their share in the division of the through rate. Of course, rebates were illegal; but you never could exactly tell what an originating line might not do to keep a sufficient amount of business originating. Take his own line, now, for instance, and borax shipments from the Mojave Desert as against the Union Pacific with borax shipments from Death Valley.
