The driving force in his character which has made him so powerful a man of business, owes little to the higher virtues.

He has found the plain of life too full of absorbing interest and too crowded with abounding opportunities for getting on to raise his eyes to the mountains.

This is not to say that he is a man of no ideals, but to say that his ideals are of too practical and prosaic a kind ever to stir the pulses with excitement.
Nevertheless I regard him as a born statesman, and could wish that the conditions of political life made it more easy for a man of his gifts to serve the country than men with the gifts of, let us say, Dr.Macnamara or Sir Hamar Greenwood.
The world knows so little of him that perhaps I may begin my political reflections in this case with a brief summary of his career, such details of a business man's biography as may contribute to an understanding of his character.
Andrew Weir, as he was in those days, went to school at Kirkcaldy, where he was chiefly notable for seeking information on more subjects than came under the jurisdiction of his pedagogue's ferule.

A benign Rosa Dartle might have been his godmother.

He was for ever consulting encyclopaedias and books of reference.