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in the distance,” as Disraeli says, when the right man will be put in the right place, when
“Sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth
Shall bear the gree, and a’ that.”
Then will I get justice. Had I been Her Majesty’s representative at Hong Kong, this country would not now have been at war with China, and Messrs. Bright, Cobden, and many other good men and true, would still have been in Parliament. Wars, and rumours of wars, invariably arise from having the wrong men in place, while the right men are in no place at all, as in my own case. When will the world learn wisdom?
As I grew up my naturally active and ardent mind revolted at the common place drudgery of the loom, and I determined to free myself from its heddles and treddles. Many a time I mentally consigned these articles to the place which Rob Roy wished to see Bailie Nicol Jarvis heddles and treddles sent to. Having heard and read of Packmen I resolved, like Norval of the Grampians, to leave my father’s house, and take with me a chosen well selected pack, and with it push my fortune in the wide, wide world, as a Packman! or to use a more polite phrase, as a Commercial Traveller. The latin scholar has now the key to my abbreviated titled P.C., and which no other person has any right to assume.
