But the critical sharpness, and the abrupt manner of the man of business, preoccupied with the responsibilities of so large an establishment with endless claims on its directing head, all disappeared so soon as he had satisfied himself that his instructions were being rightly carried out. The new Parkside Works were within easy distance of Salisbury Green; and the claimants on his ever-ready charity speedily learned to know the time when he could be waylaid in his walk to or from the counting-room, and beguiled with a piteous tale. Mr. Gray, for many years the faithful head of the financial department, thus writes: “To old servants in the works he opened his purse freely. Women who had been employed in early days at the Castle Hill were held by him in special favour, and I have often seen him give them a pound note, sometimes when it was doubtful if they would make the best use of it. The plea that they had worked at one time at Hope Park was a frequent claim of beggars; and many is the silver piece that has been given away to such folks. One adept at begging came to him, her tatters soaked and leaky slippers dripping with rain. She told a piteous tale, and pleaded she was the widow of a machineman in the firm’s employment thirty years before. The plea was irresistible; but the voluble manner in which the woman overacted her part aroused his suspicions after he had responded to her appeal. ‘What sort of a man was your husband?’ asked he. ‘Oh, a good, a very good man!’ ‘Ay; was he tall or short?--as tall as that man?’ pointing to a man about six feet high who had just entered. ‘Yes!’ responded the woman, ‘he was a braw, tall man.’ ‘Give me back the money!’ he exclaimed with unwonted severity of tone, as he recalled the fact that the old machinist was much below the ordinary stature; and the impostor was ordered to the door.” His unstinted liberality in all philanthropic and missionary work was wholly unaffected by denominational or party limits; and hence he was liable to be preyed upon by genteel foreigners claiming to be in temporary pecuniary distress, and still more by clerical impostors. When he had reason to think he was imposed upon, he would search into the matter with the utmost keenness; though rather, as it seemed, with a desire to satisfy himself of the truth, than with any purpose of stinting his liberality in the future.