ur own time too." Until that
moment I had never seriously thought of putting my reminiscences on
record, but my friend's words fell on favourable ground, and now, less
than a month since that night in Donegal, I am sitting at my desk penning
these opening lines.

That my undertaking will not be an easy one I know. My memory is well
stored, but unfortunately I have never kept a diary or commonplace book
of any kind. On the contrary a love of order and neatness, carried to
absurd excess, has always led me to destroy accumulated letters or
documents, and much that would be useful now has in the past, from time
to time, been destroyed and "cast as rubbish to the void."

Most autobiographies, I suppose, are undertaken to please the writers.
That this is the case with me I frankly confess; but I hope that what I
find much pleasure in writing my readers may, at least, find some
satisfaction in reading. Vanity, perhaps, plays some part in this hope,
for, "He that is pleased with himself easily imagines that he shall
please others."

Carlyle says, "A true delineation of the smallest man, and his scene of
pilgrimage through life, is capable of interesting the greatest man; that
all men are to an unspeakable degree brothers, each man's life a strange
emblem of every man's; and that human portraits, faithfully drawn, are of
all pictures the welcomest on human walls."

I am not sure that portraits of the artist by himself, though there are
notable and noble instances to the contrary, are often successful. We
rarely "see oursels as ithers see us," and are inclined to regard our
virtues and our vices with equal equanimity, and to paint ourselves in
too alluring colours; but I will do my best to tell my tale with strict
veracity, and with all the modesty I can muster.

An autobiographer, too, exposes himself to the charge of egotism, but I
must run the risk of that, endeavouring to avoid the scathing criticism
of him who wrote:--

"The egotist . . . . . . .
Whose I's and Me's are scattered in his talk,
Thick as the pebbles on a gravel walk."

Fifty years of railway life, passed in the service of various companies,
large and small, in England, Scotland and Ireland, in divers' capacities,
from junior clerk to general manager, and ultimately to the ease and
dignity of director, if faithfully presented, may perhaps, in spite of
all drawbacks, be not entirely devoid of interest.

CHAPTER II.
BOYHOOD

I wa