imagination and warmth."




CHAPTER V.
EARLY OFFICE LIFE


In the year 1867, at the age of sixteen, I became a junior clerk in the
Midland Railway at Derby, at a salary of 15 pounds a year.

From pre-natal days I was destined for the railway service, as an oyster
to its shell. The possibility of any other vocation for his sons never
entered the mind of my father, nor the mind of many another father in the
town of Derby.

My railway life began on a drizzling dismal day in the early autumn. My
father took me to the office in which I was to make a start and presented
me to the chief clerk. I was a tall, thin, delicate, shy, sensitive
youth, with curly hair, worn rather long, and I am sure I did not look at
all a promising specimen for encountering the rough and tumble of railway
work.

The chief clerk handed me over to one of his assistants, who without
ceremony seated me on a tall stool at a high desk, and put before me, to
my great dismay, a huge pile of formidable documents which he called _Way
Bills_. He gave me some instructions, but I was too confused to
understand them, and too shy to ask questions. I only know that I felt
very miserable and hopelessly at sea. Visions of being dismissed as an