I could never forego
them, or forego the expense they involved, for the sake of future distant
advantages. What weighed with me, too, was the fact that I was
undoubtedly overworked and my health was suffering. It was not that my
railway duties proper were oppressive, but the duties as Secretary of the
Railway Benevolent Institution in Scotland added considerably to my
office hours, and at home I often worked far into the night writing for
the several papers to which I contributed. Too much work and too little
play was making Jack a very dull boy. I envied those officers, such as
John Mathieson, whose duties took them often out of doors, and gave them
the control and management of men.
My chief was as kind and considerate as ever, and I confided to him the
thoughts that disturbed me. Warm-heartedly he sympathised with my
feelings. He himself had gone, he said, through the same experience some
twenty years before. The prospect of promotion at St. Enoch, he agreed,
seemed remote; the principal officers, except the engineer, were young or
middle-aged; and he himself was in the prime of life.
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