For a moment John saw himself as Chief Clerk, sitting in the big swivel chair at the high, roll-top desk, with all the strings of the business he knew so well how to pull lying on the table before him; with clerks, stenographers, men from other departments and that important part of the shipping public which carried its business to the general freight office, all running to him.
And from there it was only a short, easy step to the position of Assistant General Freight Agent.
Only the man who has toiled far down in the ranks of a railroad organization doing routine work at the same old desk in the same old way for half a score of years can know on what a dizzy height sits the Chief Clerk, or how far beyond that swings the lofty title of Assistant General Freight Agent.
"Your advancement would be very rapid," suggested Mr. Mitchell, flicking his flies skilfully upon the whirling eddies of the young man's thought.
John had achieved enough and glimpsed enough to see that Mitchell was right. Advancement would be rapid. Mitchell would soon go up the line himself; he could follow him. General Freight Agent, Assistant Traffic Manager, Traffic Manager, Vice-president in charge of traffic—President! with twelve thousand miles of shining steel flowing from his hand, which he might swing and whirl and crack like a whip! The prospect was dazzling in the extreme, and yet it was only for a moment that the picture kindled. In the next it was dead and sparkless as burned-out fireworks.
"You have a strong vein of traffic in your blood," the General Freight Agent began adroitly, but John broke in upon him.
"Mr. Mitchell," he said, and his utterance was grave, "I am sorry to disappoint you, but it comes too late. A year ago such a hint would have thrown me into ecstasies. To-day it leaves me cold. I have had another vision."
The face of Mitchell shaded from seriousness almost to sadness, but he was too wise to increase by argument an ardor about which, to the railroad man, there was something not easy to be understood, something, indeed, almost fanatical. Instead Mitchell asked with sober, interested friendliness:
"What is your plan, John?"
"To resign July first," John answered, for the first time definitely crossing the bridge, "to come to San Francisco and seek an engagement with some of the stock companies playing permanently here, even though I begin the search for an opening without money enough to last more than a week or two."