especially as it was rewarded by, what seemed to me then, a very handsome
fee.

In January, 1886, an incident that is worth narrating occurred. In my
office a new junior clerk was required. An advertisement in the
newspapers produced a large number of applications, and about a dozen of
the applicants were selected to be seen, one after the other, by Pinion
and myself. Before lunch one day we interviewed half a dozen or so.
Returning together from lunching in the city, as we neared the station,
Pinion drew my attention to a youth who was evidently making for the
railway premises. Said I to Pinion: "If that youth is one of the
candidates, I'll be surprised if he's not the boy for us." It was only a
back view we had of him, but he held himself so well, walked so briskly,
looked so neat, smart, and businesslike that he arrested attention. That
boy, Charles A. Moore, then fresh from school and just fifteen, is now
general manager of the railway!

It was in 1886, too, that I first met Walter Bailey, between whom and
myself a friendship sprung up which grew in depth and sincerity as time
went on, lasted for thirty years, and was only terminated by his lamented
death in January, 1917. The friendship thus formed yielded much pleasure
and happiness to me and, I think I may safely say, also to my departed
friend. Bailey, who was about my own age, came to Ireland from the South-
Eastern Railway, soon after my settlement in Belfast, to fill the
position of Accountant to the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway. Two
young Englishmen, landed in Ireland, engaged in the same sort of
business, in the same city, would naturally gravitate towards each other
but, more than this, what made us such intimate friends were, tastes in
common, similarity of views, especially concerning railway affairs, a
mutual liking for literary matters, and--well, other less definable