before.”

I do not think our ladylike chief clerk ever indulged in these orgies, but I never knew more than the mildest remonstrance being made by him or by anyone in authority.

Pay-day was also the time for squaring accounts.  “The human species,” Charles Lamb says, “is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.”  This was true of our office, but no equal division prevailed as the borrowers predominated and the lenders, the prudent, were a small minority.  A general settlement took place monthly, after which a new period began—by the borrowers with joyous unconcern.  “Take no thought for the morrow” was a maxim dear to the heart of these knights of the pen.

Swearing, as I have said, was not considered low or vulgar or unbecoming a gentleman.  There was a senior clerk of some standing and position, a married man of thirty-five or forty years of age, who gloried in it.  His expletives were varied, vivid and inexhaustible, and the turbid stream was easily set flowing.  Had he lived a century earlier he might have been put in the stocks for his profanity, a punishment which magistrates were then, by Act of Parliament, empowered to inflict.  He was a strange individual.  Long Jack he was called.  He is not in this world now so I may write of him with freedom.

No one’s enemy but his own, he was kindly, good-natured, generous to a fault, but devil-may-care and reckless; and, at any one’s expense, or at any cost to himself, would have his fling and his joke.

It was from his lankiness and length of limb that he was called “Long Jack.”  He stood about six feet six in his boots.  He must have had means of his own, as he lived in a way far beyond the reach of even a senior clerk of the first degree.  How he came to be in a railway office, or, being in, retained his place, was a matter of wonder.  Sad to tell, he had a little daughter, five or six years of age; his only child, a sweet, blue-eyed golden-haired little fairy, who, never corrected, imitated her father’s profanity, and apparently to his great delight.  He treated it as a joke, as he treated everything.  Long Jack loved to scandalise the town by his eccentricities.  He would compound with the butcher, to drive his fast trotting horse and trap and deliver their joints, their steaks and kidneys to astonished customers, or arrange with the milkman to dispense the early morning milk, donning a milkman’s smock, and carrying two milk-pails on foot.  I remember one Good Friday morning when he perambulated the town with a donkey cart and sold, at an early hour, hot cross buns at the houses of his friends, afterwards gleefully boasting of having made a good profit on the morning’s business.  In the sixties and early seventies throughout the clerical staff of the Midland Railway were many who had not been brought up as clerks, who, somehow or other had drifted into the service, whose early avocations had been of various kinds, and whose appearance, habits and manners imparted a picturesqueness to office life which does not exist to-day, and among these.  Long Jack was a prominent, but despite his joviality, it seems to me a pathetic figure.

CHAPTER VI.
FRIENDSHIP

Delicate health, as I have said, was my lot from childhood.  After about eighteen months of office work I had a long and serious illness and was away from duty for nearly half a year.  The latter part of the time I spent in the Erewash Valley, at the house of an uncle who lived near Pye Bridge.  I was then under eighteen, growing fast, and when convalescing the country life and country air did me lasting good.  Though a colliery district the valley is not devoid of rural beauty; to me it was pleasant and attractive and I wandered about at will.

One day I had a curious experience.  In my walk I came across the Cromford Canal where it enters a tunnel that burrows beneath coal mines.  At the entrance to the tunnel a canal barge lay.  The bargees asked would I like to go through with them?  “How long is it?” said I, and “how long will it take?”  “Not long,” said bargee, “come on!”  “Right!” said I.  The tunnel just fitted the barge, scarcely an inch to spare; the roof was so low that a man lying on his back on a plank placed athwart the vessel, with his feet against the roof, propelled the boat along.  This was the only means of transit and our progress was slow and dreary.  It was a journey of Cimmerian darkness; along a stream fit for Charon’s boat.  About halfway a halt was made for dinner, but I had none.  Although I was cold and hungry the bargees’ hospitality did not include a share of their bread and cheese but they gave me a drink of their beer.  The tunnel is two miles long, and

was drippingly wet.  Several hours passed before we emerged, not into sunshine but into the open, under a clouded sky and heavy rain which had succeeded a bright forenoon.  I was nearly five miles from my uncle’s house, lightly clad, hungry and tired.  To my friends ever since I have not failed to recommend the passage of the Butterley tunnel as a desirable pleasure excursion.

When I returned to work my health was greatly improved and a small advancement in my position in the office made the rest of my time at Derby more agreeable, though, to tell the truth, I often jibbed at the drudgery of the desk and the monotony of writing pencilled-out letters which was now my daily task.  Set tasks, dull routine, monotonous duty I ever hated.

About this time shorthand was introduced into the railway.  A public teacher of Pitman’s phonography had established himself in Derby, and the Midland engaged him to conduct classes for the junior clerks.  It was not compulsory to attend the classes, but inducements to do so were held out.  A special increase of salary was promised to those who attained a certain proficiency, and a further reward was offered; the two clerks who earned most marks and, in the teacher’s opinion, reached the highest proficiency, were to be appointed assistants to the teacher and paid eight shillings weekly during future shorthand sessions, in addition to the special increase of salary.  It was a great prize and keen was the contest.  I had the good fortune to be one of the two; and the praise I got, and the benefit of the money made me contented for a time.  My companion in this success, I am glad to know, is to-day alive and well, and like myself, a superannuated member of society.  In his day he was a notable athlete, at one time bicycling champion of the Midland counties; and his prowess was won on the obsolete velocipede, with its one great wheel in front and a very small wheel behind.

A shorthand writer, my work was now to take down letters from dictation, a remove only for the better from the old way of writing from pencilled drafts.

Now it was that I made my first sincere and lasting friendship, a friendship true and deep, but which was destined to last for only ten short years.  Tom was never robust and Death’s cold hand closed all too soon a loveable

and useful life.  Our friendship was close and intimate, such as is formed in the warmth of youth and which the grave alone dissolves.  To me, during those short years, it lent brightness and gaiety to existence; and, in the days that have followed, its memory has been, and is now, a rich possession.

With both Tom and me it was friendship at first sight, and nothing until the final severance came ever disturbed its course.  He came from Lincoln and joined the office I was in.  He was two years my senior and had the advantage of