My Uncle the Baillie Quotes

“My Uncle the Baillie was still a leading figure in the public business of Greyness; and he had in addition somehow got on to the directorate of nearly every one of the larger joint stock concerns in the place. He was chairman in one or two cases, and in every case he attended his directorial meetings with wonderful regularity. In the chair at an annual meeting he had in large measure the notable and very useful faculty of being able, when the report was unsatisfactory, to cheer the shareholders by dwelling on the fact that, if the revenues had been bad there were a number of occult circumstances discovered by the directors tending to establish the belief that that it might have been much worse. And he would group their own past figures and the figures of other similar concerns in various attitudes, either to show that the latter were in a worse plight than they; or that there was yet a deal of latent elasticity in their business. It is not needful to say that a chairman of this sort is invaluable to the undertaking that can command his services. It was indeed averred by some that my Uncle loved and cultivated his numerous directoral meetings as an easy and safe mode of earning the guinea and half-guinea fees allowed, and that for that end he would without fail put in an appearance even when he was well aware that there was no business to transact.”
― William Alexander, My Uncle the Baillie

“The hour was not so very early, it being only a little before eight o'clock, but even the most frequented streets of Greyness were so deserted that the desultory tread of some heavy-footed police constable, as he daun'ert along the pavement, was sufficiently notable to arouse the attention of wakeful people who occupied front rooms toward the street, as well as of the few who from various causes had been prompted to peep out of doors; and the thoroughfares of the place were still practically in possession of incidental groups of pigeons, which flitted hither and thither, lighting in twos and threes on the causeway to pick up what they could find, and croodle threateningly at each other as they tramped round tail-ward in the vicinity of edible treasures, the ownership of which was undetermined.”
― William Alexander, My Uncle the Baillie

“The estate on which my Uncle Sandy had been a tenant was one of those on which the relations of landlord and tenant were spoken of as being on a paternal footing; the idea of its being a commercial relationship was strongly resented and declared to be the suggestion of radicalism of a very red type, only fitted, if not designed, to excite prejudice against the landlord class, whose distinctive benevolence forbad their ever going farther than to take what they wanted, and proclaim the grand old doctrine of 'LIVE and let live.”
― William Alexander, My Uncle the Baillie