Business Integrity and Stainless Honour.
July 7, 1897.
and that on the first anniversary of the great day the Hatchards gave a
dinner-party in their new house at Mossley Hill, where six guests were
present, whose names can be easily supplied, and the bowl, filled with
roses, stood in the centre of the table so that all could read the
writing thereon; that without any direct allusion to the circumstances,
or any violation of good taste, the bowl came into conversation eleven
times: once in praise of the roses; once in discussion of the pattern
(Queen Anne); once with reference to the pedestal of Irish bog-oak; once
in verification of the fact that “honour” was spelt with a “u” (it was
Freddie who, with much ingenuity, turned the search-light on honour);
and seven times in ways too subtle and fleeting for detection. When the
ladies left the room there was a look between the host and his wife as
he held the door; and when the other men's cigars were fully lit, Tommy
made and finished, with some pauses, a speech which may not sound very
eloquent on paper, but which the audience will never forget “There's a
text somewhere in the Bible,” he said, pretending that his cigar was not
drawing--“which runs something like this, 'saved by faith,' and when
I look at that bowl I remember that I... was saved that way; but it
wasn't... my faith: it was the faith... of you three men.”