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 pounds 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.