t o' nights in winter. My young
friend gave me, with great eagerness, a rare piece of news. Mr.
Johnstone, the Glasgow and South-Western general manager, was retiring
and Mr. Wainwright was to succeed him! Well, that did not excite me, and
I wondered at his earnestness; but more was to follow. Mr. Wainwright,
as general manager, required a principal clerk and there was, it seemed,
no one in the place quite suitable. He must be good at correspondence,
and expert at shorthand. I was, my young friend said, the very man; I
must apply. Mr. Wainwright was English, so was I; I came from the
Midland, and the Midland and the Glasgow and South-Western were hand and
glove. How lucky we had met; he had not thought of me till this very
moment. It was fate. Would I write tonight? By this time I was as
eager as himself. No more skating for me that night. I hurried home,
Tom and I composed a careful and judicious letter. I posted it in Her
Majesty's pillar box hard by; went to bed, but was too excited to sleep.
An answer soon came, and an interview with Mr. Wainwright followed. I
received the appointment, at a salary of 120 pounds a year to begin with;
and in the early days of the new year, two years after my first
appearance in Scotland, entered upon my duties, not at Saint Enoch
Station, where the headquarters of the Glasgow and South-Western now are,
but at Bridge Street Station on the south side of the river, where the
office staff of the company was then accommodated.

CHAPTER IX.
GENERAL RAILWAY ACTS OF PARLIAMENT

Such unromantic literature as Acts of Parliament had not, it may be
supposed, up to this, formed part of my mental pabulum. I knew that an
Act was a necessary preliminary to the construction of a railway, and
this was all I knew concerning the relations between the railways and the
State. Whilst a little learning may be a dangerous thing, in my new
situation, I soon discovered that a general manager's clerk would be the
better of possessing some knowledge of the numerous Acts of Parliament
that affected railway companies. Almost daily questions arose in which
such knowledge was useful; so I determined to become acquainted with
them, and in my leisure hours made as profound a study as I could of that
compilation which, in railway offices was then in general use--_Bigg's
General Railway Acts_. I found the formidable looking volume more
readable than I had imagined and less difficult to underst