"Your Solicitor Knows Perfectly Well That The Company Is By Law Liable
For Damage Done To Woods; And, Moreover, That Such Damage Is
Preventible By Proper Care On The Part Of Its Servants.
"I think the Directors ought to order their Solicitor to write to me
and others, to whom so impertinent a letter has been addressed, and beg
to withdraw it, with an apology for having sent it.
"I am sorry to trouble you with this matter, because I feel that you
ought not to be troubled with business in your present state of health;
but as you are still the Chairman, I could not with propriety write to
any other person.
"I am, my dear Yarborough,
"Yours very sincerely,
"NEWCASTLE.
"THE EARL OF YARBOROUGH, &c., &c."
Accordingly, I went to the mansion in Portman Square. I waited some
time; but at last in stalked the Duke, looking very awful indeed - so
stern and severe - that I could not help smiling, and saying - "The burnt
coppice, your Grace." Upon this he laughed, held out his hand, placed
me beside him, and we had a very long discussion, not about the fire,
but about the colliery he, then, was sinking - against the advice of
many of his friends in Sheffield - at Shireoaks; and when he had done
with that, we talked, once more, about Canada, the United States, and
the Colonies generally.
After this date, I had to see the Duke on business, more and more
frequently. The year after the Duke's return from Canada, in 1861, he
happened to read an article I had written in a London paper, hereafter
given, about opening up the Northern Continent of America by a Railway
across to the Pacific, and he spoke of it as embodying the views which
he had before expressed, as his own.
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