He resented such a condition of mind as reflecting upon his legal and
other acumen. Angry, too, he was because he had been forced to accept,
the previous day, a favour from a firm--Mr. Rae would not condescend to
say a rival firm--with which he for thirty years had maintained only
the most distant and formal relations, to wit, the firm of Thomlinson &
Shields. Messrs. Rae & Macpherson were family solicitors and for three
generations had been such; hence there gathered about the firm a fine
flavour of assured respectability which only the combination of solid
integrity and undoubted antiquity can give. Messrs. Rae & Macpherson had
not yielded in the slightest degree to that commercialising spirit
which would transform a respectable and self-respecting firm of family
solicitors into a mere financial agency; a transformation which Mr. Rae
would consider a degradation of an ancient and honourable profession.
This uncompromising attitude toward the commercialising spirit of the
age had doubtless something to do with their losing the solicitorship
for the Bank of Scotland, which went to the firm of Thomlinson &
Shields, to Mr. Rae's keen, though unacknowledged, disappointment;
a disappointment that arose not so much from the loss of the very
honourable and lucrative appointment, and more from the fact that the
appointment should go to such a firm as that of Thomlinson & Shields.
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