and the public may benefit from the infusion into the management of business qualities.  In that case a board of business men have in ten years raised the dividend on the ordinary stock from nil to 5.5 per cent., while giving the public an improved service and reduced rates.”  My satisfaction was the greater as I had given evidence before the Commission, and helped to tell them the cheerful story of the progress and development of the County Down Company.  It was my first appearance as a railway witness and before Sir James Allport, who had commanded my unbounded admiration from my first entrance at Derby into railway life.  Need I say that to me it was an event of importance.

In the year 1875 the Board of the County Down, after an investigation of its affairs by a Committee of Shareholders, was reorganised, and it was then that Mr. Richard Woods Kelly became Chairman, and Lord (then Mr.) Pirrie a Director.  The latter has more than once since told me that the County Down shares were one of his best investments.

Mr. Kelly merits more than a passing word.  Before I joined the County Down I was told he was a “terror,” and that I ran foolish risk in leaving a service like the Glasgow and South-Western for a position in which I might find it impossible to please.  But fears like that never disturbed me.  To wrongdoers Mr. Kelly could certainly be “a terror,” and wrongdoers there were, I believe, in the service in the early days of his chairmanship.  He was a mild-mannered man, tall, rather pale, with refined features and a low-toned pleasant voice.  But beneath this smooth and gentle exterior resided great firmness.  He would smile and smile with wonderful imperturbability and, in the quietest tones and the blandest way, say severe and cutting things.  Economy was his strong point and he observed it in his public and private life with meritorious consistency.  Impervious to cold, as to most other human weaknesses, in winter or summer he never wore an overcoat.  His smooth face and tall slight figure seemed as indifferent to the angry elements as bronze or stone.  By man or Nature I never saw him ruffled or in the least degree disturbed.  But he had his human side, as all men have, and in time I discovered it and grew to like him.  He was not at heart so cold as he seemed.  Though he could not write a page without mis-spelling some of the words, his letters were always concise and very much to the point.  But it was only in spelling he was deficient.  He spoke well, was a shrewd judge of men, had a keen sense of humour, a clear perception of facts, and was quick to detect and discard everything irrelevant.

Lord Pirrie and Mr. Kelly, in connection with the County Down, were hand and glove, and it was no small part they played in its transformation from dark and dismal poverty to smiling prosperity.