" 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