In an address given by William Nelson to those in his employment, at one of his social entertainments, when a building was in progress at Hope Park which he then assumed was to be the final addition to the works, he traced the rise of the firm, interspersing the graver narrative with humorous incidents, and with kindly notices of some whom he referred to as faithful fellow-workers, from the time when he first gathered them around him in the new workrooms on the Castle Hill. One of the reminiscences of their entertainer’s narrative is thus recalled:--When Hope Park grounds were about to be built upon, Mr. Nelson, being curious to explore the place, made a visit to what he described as a wilderness of cabbage gardens, with no end of pig-sties. One grumphy (Anglice, a sow) he noticed in a corner where the joiner’s workshop afterwards stood, which, as he humorously described it, “kept its carriage!” The body of a four-wheeled coach, still in good condition, had been consigned to this novel use. The contrast was striking when, in later years, the smooth grass lawn, with its tasteful array of shrubs and flower-plots, filled the area enclosed on three sides by the Hope Park works. But the full development of the establishment was the result of years of patient and steady progress, until it grew to proportions adequate for the varied departments embraced in the comprehensive scheme, with all its ingenious improvements in machinery for economizing labour. Its tall chimney showed from afar the scale on which its operations were carried on; though at a later date William Nelson realized very strongly the injury to the amenities of the city, and the obstruction to the magnificent views of the surrounding landscape, occasioned by such adjuncts to its manufactories, and laboured by precept and example to get rid of them. In the later Parkside Works gas-engines are the sole motive power, and their general introduction was advocated by him as a substitute for the unsightly chimney with its obscuring volumes of smoke.