The following anecdote of Mr. Gladstone is told by Walter Jerrold and is
appropriate as well as timely here:
"During Mr. Gladstone's first tenure of office as Chancellor of the
Exchequer, a curious adventure occurred to him in the London offices of
the late Mr. W. Lindsay, merchant, shipowner and M.P. There one day
entered a brusque and wealthy shipowner of Sunderland, inquiring for Mr.
Lindsay. As Mr. Lindsay was out, the visitor was requested to wait in an
adjacent room, where he found a person busily engaged in copying some
figures. The Sunderland shipowner paced the room several times and took
careful note of the writer's doings, and at length said to him, 'Thou
writes a bonny hand, thou dost.'
"'I am glad you think so,' was the reply.
"'Ah, thou dost. Thou makes thy figures weel. Thou'rt just the chap I
want.'
"'Indeed!' said the Londoner.
"'Yes, indeed,' said the Sunderland man. 'I'm a man of few words. Noo,
if thou'lt come over to canny ould Sunderland thou seest I'll give thee
a hundred and twenty pounds a year, and that's a plum thou dost not meet
with every day in thy life, I reckon. Noo then.'
"The Londoner replied that he was much obliged for the offer, and would
wait till Mr.
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