I had now completed one half of my active railway life; reached the age of 39; and, no longer a rolling stone, was settled in the service of a company with which I was destined to remain for the rest of my railway career.  That my aspirations were satisfied I do not pretend, for ambition forbade any settled feeling of rest or content.  Happily, my nature inclined to the sunny side and disappointments never spoiled my enjoyment of life or marred the pleasure I found in my daily work.  My friend, Edward John Cotton, who, like myself, was an imported Englishman, had, like me, indulged in dreams of going back to England to fill some great railway post, but he had reached his sixties and his dreams were over.  Often, when we talked familiarly together, he would say:  “Joseph, if you aspire to be a general manager in England you ought never to have come to Ireland.  They don’t think much on the other side of Irish railways or Irish railway men.”  This, I daresay, was true, though he, well known, liked and admired as he was, ought to have been considered an exception, and why no British railway company, when posts were going, ever snapped him up is hard to say.  Later on, even I, once or twice narrowly escaped obtaining a good thing on the English side of the Channel, but it never quite came off, and so I was left to make myself as happy as I could in Ireland.

Perhaps it was as well.  Railway life in Ireland, though not highly remunerated, had its compensations as most situations in life have.  There the pressure of work was less constant and severe than in England.  A railway manager was not confined to crowded cities, and enjoyed more breathing space.  When he travelled on his line he came in contact with bucolic interests instead of the whirring wheels of trade.  Time moved more slowly, greater leisure prevailed, the climate was softer, the country greener, manners easier, and more wit and humour abounded.  Yes, on the whole, I was more fortunate than had my ambitious hopes been realised to the full.  At least I think so now; and, as Hamlet says, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

One immediate advantage I gained by entering the Midland Great Western service.  Until then I had no chance of joining a superannuation fund.  The Glasgow and South-Western had none, neither had the County Down; but the Midland Great Western was a party to the Clearing House Superannuation Corporation, and of it I became a member.

The Midland Great Western, as I have said, is the third largest railway in Ireland.  It stretches from the Liffey to the Atlantic, serves the plains of Meath, the wilds of Connaught, and traverses large expanses of bog.  Galway, Sligo, Westport, Athlone and Mullingar are the principal towns on its system.