FACING THE WORLD. 21

long run, time brings its revenges and its rewards.

As-it did to Donald Boyd. He has not been
taken into the house of Bethune & Co., as a part-
ner; and it was long before he became even a
clerk —at least with anything like a high salary.
For Mr. Bethune, so far from being an old bach-
elor, had a large family to provide for, and was
bringing up several of his sons to his own busi-
ness, so there was little room for a stranger. But
a young man who deserves to find room generally
does find it, or make it. And though Donald
started at the lowest rung of the ladder, he may
climb to the top yet.

He had “a fair field, and no favor.” Indeed,
he neither wished nor asked favor. He determined
to stand on his own feet from the first. He had
hard work and few holidays, made mistakes, found
them out and corrected them, got sharp words and
bore them, learnt his own weak points and — not
so easily —his strong ones. Still he did learn
them ; for, unless you can trust yourself, be sure
nobody else will trust you.

This was Donald’s great point.

Fle was trusted.

People soon found out that they might trust him;
that he always told the truth, and never pretended
to do more than he could do; but that what he could
do, they might depend upon his doing, punctually,
accurately, carefully, and never leaving off till it
was done. Therefore, though others might be
quicker, sharper, more “up to things ” than he,
there was no one so reliable, and it soon got to be
a proverb in the office of Bethune & Co, —and
other offices, too— “If you wish a thing done, go
to Boyd.”

I am bound to say this, for I am painting no im-
aginary portrait, but describing an individual who
really exists, and who may be met any day walking
about Edinburgh, though his name is not Donald
Boyd, and there is no such firm as Bethune & Co.
But the house he does belong to values the young
fellow so highly that there is little doubt he will
rise in it, and rise in every way, probably to the
very top of the tree, and tell his children and
grandchildren the story which, in its main features,
I have recorded here, of how he first began facing
the world.