Pioneering Days: Thrilling Incidents

Excerpt

Soon after the death of Sir William Hartley I was invited by his family to write his Life. It was not possible for me to decline the invitation, though I was already committed to a heavy programme of literary work. We had been united by a long and intimate friendship; we had been fellow-labourers in a common task; I held him in the highest esteem and cherished for him a loyal affection. More over it was due to his initiative that I left Oxford to enter the service of my own Church. I could do no other, then, than respond to this last obligation of friendship. Yet I was conscious that in some ways I might be unfitted for the task. The world of business, in which he achieved so resounding a success, is territory which I have left almost unexplored; and the technicalities of manufacture are, if possible, even more unfamiliar. But it was the wish of the family, as it was in harmony with my own instinct, that the emphasis of the biography should lie on the personality of the man and on his activities so far as they disclosed it, rather than on the mere facts in themselves or the steps by which he rose till he became one of the merchant princes of our land.