models of perspicuity.  He used the scantiest notes, mere headings of subjects, and a few scraps of paper containing figures which he usually remembered without their aid.  Of his memory he was proud.  One day, at a meeting of the Board, after recalling particulars of some old transaction which no one else could in the least recollect, he turned to me and said:  “Well, Tatlow, you see I sometimes remember something.”  I rejoined:  “Well, Sir Ralph, my only complaint is that you never forget anything.”  The little compliment pleased him.  Never in his whole life, he said, had he written out a speech, and hoped he never would, but he lived to do so once.  As he advanced in years his voice grew weaker, and on the last occasion on which he presided at a meeting of shareholders, he wrote his speech, or partly wrote it and, at his request, I read it to the meeting.  Reported verbatim his addresses read as though they had been composed and written with the utmost care, so precise and correct was the language and so consecutive the matter.  Though few could hope to do so well as he, I have always thought that in addressing shareholders, railway chairmen might trust less to formally prepared speeches and more to their powers of extemporaneous exposition.  Some chairmen do this I know, but others still read from manuscript.  However able the matter, the reading, in my judgment, is much less effective than the spontaneous expression of the speaker.  The atmosphere created by the meeting, often a valuable adjunct, cannot be taken advantage of when the speech is read, nor can the chance of improvising a telling point, of enforcing an argument, or of seizing a passing mood of the audience or some fleeting incident of the moment.

Sir Ralph was made a Director of the Midland Great Western Company in 1864, and a year later was elected chairman, a position he occupied for the long period of 39 years.  In 1864 the railway was in a very bad condition, wretchedly run down, and woefully mismanaged.  Indeed, according to an official report at the time, worse than mismanagement existed.  It was stated:  “There were grave charges of official corruption which necessitated the retirement of one of the leading officers from the company’s service.”  This was very exceptional in railway history, for British and Irish railways possess a record that has rarely been sullied.  In my long career I only remember two other instances—­one, the famous Redpath fraud (a name not inappropriate for one whose destiny it was to tread a road that led to his ruin) on the Great Northern in 1856, which Sir Henry (then Mr.) Oakley greatly assisted in discovering, and which, I believe, led to his first substantial advancement; the other on the Belfast and Northern Counties in 1886.  This was in Edward John Cotton’s time, but it would be superfluous to say that he was clear of blame for he was integrity itself.  That the occurrence could have happened during his management distressed him greatly I know.