m only at
the breakfast and luncheon hours, but I can remember how encouraging his
cheery optimism and unfailing friendship were to one who found the path
at times far from easy and the demands on one's patience almost more
than could be endured." Many a workman, too, with whom he wrought at
that time will tell you to-day, and with a regret at his untimely loss
as pathetic as it is sincere, how faithful he was, how upstanding,
generous. He would work at full pressure in order to gain time to assist
an old workman "in pulling up his job." He would share his lunch with a
mate, toil half the night in relief of a fellow-apprentice who had been
overcome by sickness, or would plunge gallantly into a flooded hold to
stop a leakage. "It seemed his delight," writes a foreman, "to make
those around him happy. His was ever the friendly greeting and the warm
handshake and kind disposition." Such testimony is worth pages of
outside eulogy, and testimony of its kind, from all sorts and
conditions, exists in abundance.

The long day's work over at the Island, many a young man would have
preferred, and naturally perhaps, to spend his evenings pleasurably: not
so Tom Andrews. Knowing the necessity, if real success were to be
attained, of perfecting himself on the technical as much as on the
practical side of his profession, and perhaps having a desire also to
make good what he considered wasted opportunities at school, he pursued,
during the five years of his apprenticeship, and afterwards too, a rigid
course of night studies: in this way gaining an excellent knowledge of
Machine and Freehand drawing, of Applied mechanics, and the theory of
Naval architecture. So assiduously did he study that seldom was he in
bed before eleven o'clock; he read no novels, wasted no time over
newspapers; and hardly could be persuaded by his friends to give them
his company for an occasional evening. His weekly game of cricket or
hockey, with a day's hunting now and then or an afternoon's yachting on
the Lough, gave him all the relaxation he could permit himself; and by
1894, when his term of apprenticeship ended, the thrill of hitting a
ball over the boundary (and Tom was a mighty hitter who felt the thrill
often) was experienced with less and still less frequency, whilst
sometimes now, and more frequently as time went on, the joy of spending
Sunday with his dear folk at Comber had to be foregone. Even when the
Presidency of the Northern Cricket Union was