But another day he repeated his
question, and I replied, 'Well, it was because, while the big and
the little were fighting, I crept up between them, carried out my
enterprise, and obliged everybody.'" This, however, did not
satisfy Mr. Drummond, who asked Bianconi to write down for him an
autobiography, containing the incidents of his early life down to
the period of his great Irish enterprise. Bianconi proceeded to
do this, writing down his past history in the occasional
intervals which he could snatch from the immense business which
he still continued personally to superintend. But before the
"Drummond memoir" could be finished Mr. Drummond himself had
ceased to live, having died in 1840, principally of overwork.
What he thought of Bianconi, however, has been preserved in his
Report of the Irish Railway Commission of 1838, written by Mr.
Drummond himself, in which he thus speaks of his enterprising
friend in starting and conducting the great Irish car
establishment:--
"With a capital little exceeding the expense of outfit he
commenced. Fortune, or rather the due reward of industry and
integrity, favoured his first efforts. He soon began to increase
the number of his cars and multiply routes, until his
establishment spread over the whole of Ireland. These results
are the more striking and instructive as having been accomplished
in a district which has long been represented as the focus of
unreclaimed violence and barbarism, where neither life nor
property can be deemed secure.
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