them, or forego the expense they involved, for the sake of future distant
advantages. What weighed with me, too, was the fact that I was
undoubtedly overworked and my health was suffering. It was not that my
railway duties proper were oppressive, but the duties as Secretary of the
Railway Benevolent Institution in Scotland added considerably to my
office hours, and at home I often worked far into the night writing for
the several papers to which I contributed. Too much work and too little
play was making Jack a very dull boy. I envied those officers, such as
John Mathieson, whose duties took them often out of doors, and gave them
the control and management of men.

My chief was as kind and considerate as ever, and I confided to him the
thoughts that disturbed me. Warm-heartedly he sympathised with my
feelings. He himself had gone, he said, through the same experience some
twenty years before. The prospect of promotion at St. Enoch, he agreed,
seemed remote; the principal officers, except the engineer, were young or
middle-aged; and he himself was in the prime of life. He did not want to
lose me, but I must look out, and he would look out too. At last the
opportunity came, and it came from Ireland. The Belfast and County Down
Railway Chairman, Mr. R. W. Kelly, and a director, Lord (then Mr.)
Pirrie, were deputed to see half a dozen or so likely young applicants in
England and Scotland. I was interviewed by these gentlemen in Glasgow,
was selected for the vacant post of general manager, and in May, 1885,
removed with my family to Belfast, and entered upon my duties there.

Lord Pirrie is a great shipbuilder of world-wide fame. I was not long at
the County Down before I discovered his wonderful energy, his marvellous
capacity for work, his thoroughness, and keen business ability. I always
thought that at our interview at Saint Enoch he was as much impressed
with the order and method which appeared in the office of which I had