‘In the beginning—God!’ It is a good motto for a person who is just setting up in business.When Lord Hopetoun—afterwards Lord Linlithgow—lived in Melbourne as the first Governor-General of Australia, he told us that he cherished with pride an old brass-bound leather-covered ledger. It is the book with which John Hope, the founder of his lordship's family, began business in High Street, Edinburgh, nearly three centuries ago. And, on the front page of his ledger, old John Hope had inscribed this prayer: O Lord, keep me and this book honest! And the fact that his remote descendants rose to be peers of the realm, one of them becoming the first Governor-General of this great Commonwealth and another a Governor-General of India, speaks for itself.
F W Boreham, Boulevards of Paradise (London: The Epworth Press, 1944), 72.
Image: Lord Hopetoun
