The material for the serious love-making and flirtation pictures amid Syrian ruins, palm-trees, and deserts had been collected, but not entirely worked up, before that expedition closed. The finishing strokes were to be given during a hurried stay at Glasgow, whither he had been sent on Post Office business. So far, few men of Trollope’s social taste and literary notoriety could have made fewer personal acquaintances among the rank and file of his craft. About newspaper writers, and editors in particular, personally he knew absolutely nothing. His journey beyond the Tweed introduced him in Edinburgh to the most distinguished Scotch journalist of the day, Alexander Russel, who had made for himself on _The Scotsman_ a position at least equal to that belonging in London to J. T. Delane of _The Times_. On the Conservative side James Hannay had not then been installed at _The Edinburgh Courant_. As, however, on comparing notes in London many years after the two men found out, Hannay and Trollope had just met each other beneath Professor Blackie’s roof.
The eventfulness to Trollope of the year 1858 did not end with the incidents already recorded. He had acquitted himself so well in his Egyptian treaty-making, not less than in the tour of inspection which went with it, that on his return from Scotland he had scarcely unpacked in London before receiving orders to prepare for a voyage across the Atlantic. In _He Knew He was Right_, Mrs. Trevelyan’s father stands for a favourable specimen of a West Indian governor. The postmasters and other officials of that sort provided for our transatlantic dependencies were often not up to Sir Marmaduke Rowley’s mark. As a consequence, the British postal service in this part of the world had become disorganised, discredited, and even somewhat discreditable, besides being, at its best, irregular and ineffective. Trollope had already given repeated proof that the public service possessed no man more competent than himself for investigating abuses, for detecting failures or weak spots in a system, and for effectively reprimanding the local officials who were responsible. These congenial tasks were now once more filled to perfection. Of course, before leaving England he had held the inevitable interview with the publisher he had selected for the book that the tour was to produce. This volume, for it did not run to more, was most of it written on board ship. He had begun his work while steaming out of Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, and had still some thousands of miles to traverse. He continued it uninterruptedly amid all the other duties of his absence.