Note 339 — Chapter X

When I commenced business in London, Mr. Allan was one of my earliest friends, and our friendship remained unbroken until his death in September 1874. I can therefore, of my own knowledge, speak of the difficulties he had to encounter, and of the numerous obstacles to be overcome in establishing the vast business with which he was so long and so intimately associated. To establish agencies at the leading ports of India and China, open depôts for coals, erect docks and factories for the repairs of their ships, to bring the whole into systematic and harmonious working order, and, above all, to keep agencies remote from each other and far from home, under proper control, required a master mind of no common order, the more so that the system he organized was then entirely new. Mr. Allan was, however, in every way equal to this arduous duty; his industry was unwearied, his love for truth ever conspicuous, and, with these he combined the most unassuming and pleasing manners. His only failing consisted in believing all other men to be as upright as himself.