often rallied me on mine.  He never in all his life asked for any improvement in salary or position; but, in spite of his inveterate modesty, rose high, became Chief Accountant of the Midland Railway of England and, I should say, the leading railway accountant in the United Kingdom.  On railway matters he was a writer of great skill, and all he wrote was enlivened with the happiest humour.  To the Railway News he was a valued contributor, and in railway polemics a master.

[Walter Bailey:  bailey.jpg]

The Director on the County Down with whom I became most intimate was the Right Honourable (then Mr.) Thomas Andrews.  He was brother to Judge Andrews; brother-in-law of Lord Pirrie; became Chairman of the Company; was made a Privy Councillor; a Deputy Lieutenant of Down; High Sheriff of that County and President of this and that, for he was a man of ability and character, but simple in mind and manners as the best men mostly are.  Eloquent in speech, warm-hearted and impulsive, he found it difficult to resist a joke, even at the expense of his friend.  In April, 1890, he wrote me:  “I hope you were not at all annoyed at my pleasantries to Mr. Pinion.  I am not exactly one of those men who would rather lose a friend than a joke, but I find it hard to resist a joke when a good opportunity presents itself.  I am bound to say that I would be sorry to annoy you, by a jest or in any other way.”  His temper was lively but though quickly roused soon subsided, and he never harboured resentment.  At the conclusion of the very first Board meeting I attended as general manager at the County Down, he followed me into my room, complimented me on the way I had discussed the business of the day, and added:  “I’m sure you’ll be successful in Ireland for you have the suaviter in modo combined with the fortiter in re.”  It was a pretty compliment, and sincere I knew, for no one could meet him without recognising his frank outspoken nature.  On the threshold of my new work such encouragement greatly cheered me and increased my determination to do my best.  Until his death, not long ago, we often corresponded on railway and other matters, and he was always my staunch friend.  He had a taste, too, for poetry which we sometimes discussed.  The Thomas Andrews, who went down with the Titanic in the North Atlantic, on the 14th April, 1912, was his son, the story of whose short but strenuous life, and its tragic end, is told in a little book written by Shan F. Bullock.  Sir Horace Plunkett wrote an introduction to it, in which he says:  “He was one of the noblest Irishmen Ulster has produced in modern times, to whom came the supreme test in circumstances demanding almost superhuman fortitude and self-control.  There was not the wild excitement of battle to sustain him; death had to be faced calmly in order that others—­to whom he must not even bid farewell—­might live.”  A few minutes before the end, so it is recorded,