Grayson County TXGenWeb

Texas & Pacific Railroad

Dallas Morning News
June 6, 1897

The Secret of Success
Texas Baptist Standard.

Perhaps one recent event in railway circles in Texas has attracted more widespread attention than the promotion of Mr. E.P. Turner, the Dallas city ticket agent of the Texas and Pacific Railway company, to the position of general passenger agent of that important line. Mr. L.S. Thorne, vice president of the company, is being congratulated on every hand on having made such a splendid appointment, and the friends of the Texas and Pacific, whose name is legion, are delighted with Mr. Turner's promotion.

While the Standard heartily joins in extending its congratulations to Mr. Thorne on the wisdom displayed in the appointment of Mr. Turner, and while we rejoice in the just recognition of the merits of a most worthy and capable gentleman, the chief purpose of this article is to point a moral for the benefit of the thousands of young men and boys who read this paper.

Some twenty years ago Mr. Turner began his railway work as ticket agent of the Texas and Pacific in a north Texas town. He was young, obscure and poor, but he possessed an inherent capital of far greater real value than fame or riches. He was a gentleman. Not, indeed, the sort of "gentleman" that appears well in "society" and ignores the common civilities of every day life, but a gentleman in deed and in truth, and to the manner born.

Those who are familiar with the duties of a ticket agent know that one of his greatest crosses is to answer all the questions, wise
and otherwise, that an impatient and exacting public may chance to ask. These questions cover the entire field of interrogation,
from the catechizing by the beardless youth who has come to ride on the train for the first time, to the demands of the ancient dame, who insists on knowing the freight rate on eggs and chickens from Texas to the island of Borneo. All of these trials and exactions confronted Mr. Turner, and he fairly took the whole horde of inquisitors off their feet by posting a sign in a conspicuous place which bore this strange motto, "No Trouble to Answer Questions." In those early days of Mr. Turner's railway experiences there came to Sherman a beardless boy who had never been inside a railway car. He had come from a Grayson county farm, and for the first time was to come in touch with the great surging, selfish and unpitying world. He did not know how to take the train, but seeing Mr. Turner's motto, he timidly approached him and asked him all about it. Mr. Turner was not content to simply tell him, but took the pains to go and show the inquiring boy all about the mysteries of properly getting on a train, and then to send him off in the direction he wished to go. That boy is now Hon. Jink Evans of Corsicana, who is one of the leading attorneys of Texas and has been honored with the position of mayor of that goodly city.

Let all young men and boys take this pearl of truth well to heart: It pays to be a gentleman. The statement so often made that great men are easy to approach is almost universally true, and the touchstone of their greatness is that in their veins there courses the only genuine royal blood - that of the courteous, gallant and courtly gentleman. This high road to distinction and success is open
to every boy born on American soil. The men who in the next generation shall scale its heights are the manly boys who now love truth and right and who are gentlemanly toward all men and women - their own mothers included. About the time Mr. Turner was modestly beginning his career as a railroad man, Mr. Kohlsaat was selling papers on the streets of Chicago and taking his earnings home each day to his mother. To-day one of these boys is general passenger agent of one of the greatest railway lines in the southwest and the other owns one of the largest and most influential daily papers on this continent. They won by being gentlemen.

Every young man and boy who reads these words stands where two roads diverge. One of these roads leads down through the underbrush and muck of selfishness, egotism, jealousy, sloth, poverty and all the low and common things of life. The other is the royal road that leads up through politeness, gallantry, truth, industry, economy, integrity, frugality and success. It meanders by all the pleasant ways in life, and close by its side is that stream on whose bosom flows the waters of eternal happiness. We urge all
our boys to take this royal road. It is open to each and all, and the country youth whose schoolrooms are the forest and the fields
can as truly scale its heights as can the boy whose lines fall in more pleasant places. True manliness is the open sesame to all that is worth having in this life or in the life to come.