Very various are the feelings which actuate the directors and shareholders of different railways at these half-yearly gatherings. Doubtless some directors go to the place of meeting with the feelings of men who go to execution, and the shareholders go with the feelings of executioners, if not worse; while other directors and shareholders unquestionably go to hold something like a feast of reason and a flow of soul.
The half-yearly meeting we write of was imbued with the latter spirit. Wisdom and conscientious care had steered the ship and swayed the councils of the Grand National Trunk Railway, so that things were in what the captain called a highly flourishing condition. One consequence was, that the directors wore no defensive armour, and the shareholders came to the ground without offensive weapons.
Sir Cummit Strong having taken the chair, the secretary read the advertisement convening the meeting.
The chairman, who was a tall, broad-browed, and large-mouthed man, just such an one as might be expected to become a railway king, then rose, and, after making a few preliminary observations in reference to the report, which was assumed to have been read, moved, “that the said report and statement of accounts be received and adopted.”
“He-ar, he-ar!” exclaimed a big vulgar man, with an oily fat face and a strong voice, who was a confirmed toady.
“I am quite sure,” the chairman continued, “that I have the sympathy of all in this meeting when I say that the half-year which has just come to a close has been one of almost unmixed success—”
“He-ar, he-ar!” from the toady.
“And,” continued the chairman, with pointed emphasis, and a glance at the toady, which was meant to indicate that he had put in his oar too soon, but which the toady construed into a look of gratitude—“and of very great satisfaction to those whom you have appointed to the conducting of your affairs.”
“He-ar, he-ar!”
Captain Lee, who sat immediately behind the toady and felt his fingers and toes tingling, lost a good deal of what followed, in consequence of falling into a speculative reverie, as to what might be the legal consequences, if he were to put his own hat on the toady’s head, and crush it down over his eyes and mouth.