RAILROAD SERVICE From the operating-room of the telegraph office I had now stepped into the open world, and the change at first was far from agreeable.

I had just reached my eighteenth birthday, and I do not see how it could be possible for any boy to arrive at that age much freer from a knowledge of anything but what was pure and good.

I do not believe, up to that time, I had ever spoken a bad word in my life and seldom heard one.

I knew nothing of the base and the vile.

Fortunately I had always been brought in contact with good people.
I was now plunged at once into the company of coarse men, for the office was temporarily only a portion of the shops and the headquarters for the freight conductors, brakemen, and firemen.