“To-morra’ nicht—to-morra’?” quoth the spirituous caller. “To-morra’ nicht I shan’t care a d——n aboot it.”
Eighteen months at Kennishead brought promotion to the ticket office at Pollokshaws, a mile and a half nearer Glasgow. Ten shillings a week, and a twice-a-day walk across the long side of the triangle of which Thornliebank, Kennishead and Pollokshaws were the vertices, were the main changes involved in this advance; although Pollokshaws, being a town of about eight thousand people, the ticket sales were larger than at Kennishead. Another change was not so pleasant. The walk home perforce was alongside the churchyard wall, which afforded too many inducements to contemplate humanity’s latter end, to be pleasant to an undeveloped youth who liked company, but had no curiosity about epitaphs when the midnight stroke was nigh.
From Pollokshaws I was transferred to Barrhead, the station farther out from Glasgow than Kennishead. One of its leading productions nowadays is the Shanks bath and toilet equipments, which are famous the world over. The business was then in its struggling infancy. Many a ticket have I sold to the original Shanks on his way to Glasgow, carrying with him samples of his wares.
Barrhead was interesting to me because it was the birthplace of my mother, as I was reminded soon after beginning duty there. As a sweet faced old lady asked for a ticket to Glasgie, I noticed she was eyeing me closely. Receiving the cardboard, she said:
“They tell me ye’re Janet Blair’s son?”
I said that was so.
“Ay,” she went on, “I knew your mither weel, lang before ye were born. She was a grand girl, and a fine-looking woman. My, but ye’re no’ a bit like her.”
Barrhead saw the end of my service of the G.B. and K., for in 1875 I obtained a clerkship at the Caledonian freight station at Buchanan Street, Glasgow. The first thing I learned there was that Presbyterian strictness was nothing compared to one brand of railway rigidity. The office was six miles from home, and a few minutes’ walk from the South Side passenger station. The first morning train arrived there at nine o’clock. Wishing still to live at home, I asked my immediate superior to excuse me from beginning work until shortly after nine, if I made up the time at noon, or in the evening. He refused: and so, for a year I walked the six miles from Thornliebank six mornings a week.[2]
Discipline can be fearfully and wonderfully enforced. Probably no chief of a big organization ever entirely escaped criticism from his subordinates for being at times more exacting than they thought circumstances warranted. But it is likely that subordinates receive more consideration than they are aware of because their chief has not forgotten that his own early subordinations were not all lavender.
From Buchanan Street occurred my last move in Scottish railway service, in 1877. With one of the best men I have ever known for my chief, Mr. R. M. F. Watson, I helped to open Stobcross station, which the Caledonian established through an arrangement for using the North British right of way. I was Mr. Watson’s only clerk. In a week or two after the opening we needed more help; and so for the first time I ranked a little ahead of a colleague. Here I stayed five years, advancing in pay from twenty-two to forty shillings a week—and two pounds was quite a salary on a Scottish railway forty-five years ago. Stobcross to-day does an enormous business. One can wish for the younger men that they have as fine a superior officer as we had in Mr. Watson.