" I have adorned this book with
a photograph of the salver which, with the inscription it bears, will I
think, in these days, be not uninteresting.
The year 1911 was darkened for me by the shadow of death. During its
course I lost my wife, who succumbed to an illness which had lasted for
several years, an illness accompanied with much pain and suffering borne
with great courage and endurance.
CHAPTER XXX.
FROM MANAGER TO DIRECTOR
I had long cherished the hope that when, in the course of time, I sought
to retire from the active duties of railway management, I might, perhaps,
be promoted to a seat on the Board of the Company. Presumptuous though
the thought may have been, I had the justification that it was not
discouraged by some of my Directors, to whom, in the intimacy of after
dinner talk, I sometimes broached the subject. But I little imagined the
change would come as soon as it did. I had fancied that my managerial
activities would continue until I attained the usual age for
retirement--three score years and five. On this I had more or less
reckoned, but
"_There's a divinity that shapes our ends_
_Rough hew them how we will_,"
and it came to pass that at sixty-one I exchanged my busy life for a life
of comparative ease.
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