The Act of 1888 continued these and included some further
powers.
In my humble opinion the Railway Commissioners have done much useful work
and done it well. For more than forty years I have read most if not all
the cases they have dealt with. On several occasions I have been engaged
in proceedings before them, and not always on the winning side.
CHAPTER X.
A GENERAL MANAGER AND HIS OFFICE
January, 1875, was a momentous time for me. In the second week of that
month I commenced my new duties at Glasgow and bade farewell for ever to
the tall stool and "the dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood." Before me
opened a pleasing prospect of attractive and interesting work, brightened
by the beams of youthful hope and awakened ambition. I was now chief
clerk to a general manager. Was it to be wondered at that I felt proud
and elated if also a little scared as to how I should get on.
Mr. Wainwright assumed the office of general manager on the first day of
the year. I say _office_, but in fact a general manager's office
scarcely existed. His predecessor, Mr. Johnstone, a capable but in some
respects a singular man, performed his managerial duties without an
office staff, wrote all his own letters, and not only wrote them but
first carefully drafted them out in a hand minute almost as Jonathan
Swift's.
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