To strangers he would come out with a great roaring “sir,” at the end of every other sentence. His conversations began with remarks upon the weather (commonly in condemnation of it) and would, I regret to say, not infrequently terminate with an oath, as he expressed his difference from the more modern views of his companion. He would often follow up such an expletive by uttering the undoubted truth “that that was all _he_ knew about it,” or that “it was all _he_ had to say.” By some accident, probably of party tradition, he had followed Mr Gladstone in his policy of Home Rule for Ireland; but nothing save an inexcusable mulishness had made him continue to defend that worn-out error when all his friends had abandoned it. It is not remarkable that, with such a character, he should have found himself totally out of sympathy with the principal economic trend of our time, and should have boldly refused to amalgamate the Abbott Line with any combination of shipowners. I can almost see him as I write, sitting at the table at the Palmerston, where he lunched, and shouting: “Competition, sir, competition!” at the unhappy Zachary K. Peabody, the agent of the African Steamship Trust, whose refinement he was too coarse to perceive, and whose practical experience of commerce he derided. His features were, in their outline, projecting and masculine; his eyes firm, his chin solid. His hair, which was always in disorder, was of a sharp iron-grey, and two little whiskers, nearly white, emphasised the squareness of his face. But the strength of his mouth was weakened by a perpetual tendency to laughter, and what he would have called “good-fellowship,” or, as I have heard it named, “Row.” Many things had combined to give him his influence over Mr Burden. They had been young men together in the days when a common label of so-called Liberalism, the necessity for political effort, was sufficient to mask many essential differences of character between men. The greater vigour and more sanguine temperament of the shipowner had naturally over-borne the sobriety and occasional hesitation of the dealer in hardware. It must also be admitted, that in many of the small affairs of life—a narrow life, remember, and one whose horizon was easily surveyed—his judgment had rarely been at fault. It was he who had introduced Mr Burden to the trade in the M’Korio, and who would willingly—for as such crude natures often are, he was capable of affection—have gone to any sacrifice to preserve his friend from commercial or personal dishonour. He was unmarried.