as the other boys were concerned. Promotion soon came. A new operator
was wanted and Mr. Brooks telegraphed to my afterward dear friend
James D. Reid, then general superintendent of the line, another fine
specimen of the Scotsman, and took upon himself to recommend me as an
assistant operator. The telegram from Louisville in reply stated that
Mr. Reid highly approved of promoting "Andy," provided Mr. Brooks
considered him competent. The result was that I began as a telegraph
operator at the tremendous salary of twenty-five dollars per month,
which I thought a fortune. To Mr. Brooks and Mr. Reid I owe my
promotion from the messenger's station to the operating-room.[18] I
was then in my seventeenth year and had served my apprenticeship. I
was now performing a man's part, no longer a boy's--earning a dollar
every working day.

[Footnote 18: "I liked the boy's looks, and it was very easy to see
that though he was little he was full of spirit. He had not been with
me a month when he began to ask whether I would teach him to
telegraph. I began to instruct him and found him an apt pupil." (James
D. Reid, _The Telegraph in America_, New York, 1879.)

Reid was born near Dunfermline and forty years afterwards Mr. Carnegie
was able to secure for him the appointment of United States Consul at
Dunfermline.]

The operating-room of a telegraph office is an excellent school for a
young man. He there has to do with pencil and paper, with composition
and invention. And there my slight knowledge of British and European
affairs soon stood me in good stead. Knowledge is sure to prove useful
in one way or another. It always tells. The foreign news was then
received by wire from Cape Race, and the taking of successive "steamer