fivepence, but the rooms and tables and accessories were, to say the least, unappetising. Hunger had to be satisfied, however, and I had to swallow my pride and my five-pennyworth. I varied this occasionally by bringing with me my own sandwiches and eating them seated on a tombstone in Sighthill cemetery, which was less than a quarter of a mile distant from the stores department.

My work, as I have said, was monotonous enough: writing letters from dictation, an occupation which gave but little exercise to one’s faculties. I obtained some variation by occasionally taking a turn through the various stores and getting into touch with the practical men in charge. They were always very civil and ready to talk of their business, and so I learned something of the nature, quality, uses and cost of many things necessary to the working of a railway, which I afterwards found very useful. Occasionally also I visited the laboratory, in which an analytical chemist was regularly engaged.

The event which, in my short service of two years with the Caledonian, seemed to me of the greatest moment, was that, after six months or so, I became a taxpayer! This was an event indeed. In the offices at Derby it was only, as a rule, middle-aged or old men who attained this proud distinction; and here was I, not yet twenty-two, with my salary raised to £100 a year, paying income tax at the rate of threepence in the pound on forty pounds, for an abatement of sixty pounds was allowed. Until I got used to the novelty I was as proud as Lucifer.

The office in which I now worked had no Apollos, no literary geniuses, no Long Jacks, no boy benedicts, such as adorned our desks at Derby, but it rejoiced in one rara avis, who came a few months after and left a few months before me. He was a middle-aged, aristocratic, kind, good-hearted, unbusinesslike man, and was brother to a baronet. He professed a knowledge of medicine and brought a bottle, a bolus or a plaster, whichever he deemed best, whenever any of us complained of cold or cough, of headache or backache or any ailment whatever. When he left we all received from him a parting gift. Mine was a handsome, expensive, red-felt chest protector. I wore it constantly for a year or two and, for aught I know, it may be that by its protecting influence against the rigour of Glasgow winters,

the bituminous atmosphere of St. Rollox and the smoke-charged fogs of the city, I am alive and well to-day. Who can tell? It is certain that I then had a bad cough nearly always; and this I am sure was what decided the form of his parting gift to me.

It was about this time that I attended my first public dinner and made my first speech in public. Several days before the event I was told that, being in the Volunteer Force, I had been placed on the toast list to reply for the Army, Navy and Volunteers. It was a railway dinner, for the purpose of celebrating the departure to England, on promotion, of the chief clerk in the Midland Railway Company’s Scottish Agency Office. The dinner was largely attended. The idea of having to speak filled me with trepidation. But to my great surprise I acquitted myself with credit. Once on my legs I found that nervousness left me, words came freely and I even enjoyed the novel experience. To suddenly discover oneself proficient where failure had been feared increases self esteem and adds to the sum of happiness. At this dinner I also made my first acquaintance with that “Great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race,” the Haggis, which deserves the pre-eminence it enjoys.

One night, towards the end of December, in 1874, when skating by moonlight, not far from Cambuslang, I chanced to meet a young friend, a clerk in the Glasgow and South-Western Railway, who, like myself, was enjoying the pleasures of the ice. Tom was not with me, for he, poor fellow! was not well enough to be out o’ nights in winter. My young friend gave me, with great eagerness, a rare piece of news. Mr. Johnstone, the Glasgow and South-Western general manager, was retiring and Mr. Wainwright was to succeed him! Well, that did not excite me, and I wondered at his earnestness; but more was to follow. Mr. Wainwright, as general manager, required a principal clerk and there was, it seemed, no one in the place quite suitable. He must be good at correspondence, and expert at shorthand. I was, my young friend said, the very man; I must apply. Mr. Wainwright was English, so was I; I came from the Midland, and the Midland and the Glasgow and South-Western were hand and glove. How lucky we had met; he had not thought of me till this very moment. It was fate. Would I write tonight? By this time I was as eager as himself. No more skating for me that night. I hurried home, Tom and I composed a careful and judicious

letter. I posted it in Her Majesty’s pillar box hard by; went to bed, but was too excited to sleep. An answer soon came, and an interview with Mr. Wainwright followed. I received the appointment, at a salary of £120 a year to begin with; and in the early days of the new year, two years after my first appearance in Scotland, entered upon my duties, not at Saint Enoch Station, where the headquarters of the Glasgow and South-Western now are, but at Bridge Street Station on the south side of the river, where the office staff of the company was then accommodated.

CHAPTER IX.
GENERAL RAILWAY ACTS OF PARLIAMENT

Such unromantic literature as Acts of Parliament had not, it may be supposed, up to this, formed part of my mental pabulum. I knew that an Act was a necessary preliminary to the construction of a railway, and this was all I knew concerning the relations between the railways and the State. Whilst a little learning may be a dangerous thing, in my new situation, I soon discovered that a general manager’s clerk would be the better of possessing some knowledge of the numerous Acts of Parliament that affected railway companies. Almost daily questions arose in which such knowledge was useful; so I determined to become acquainted with them, and in my leisure hours made as profound a study as I could of that compilation which, in railway offices was then in general use—Bigg’s General Railway Acts. I found the formidable looking volume more readable than I had imagined and less difficult to understand than I had expected.