AUGUSTA AND HER PUBLISHER.

"Now mark you, my masters: this is comedy."--OLD PLAY.


Everybody who has any connection with Birmingham will be acquainted with
the vast publishing establishment still known by the short title of
"Meeson's," which is perhaps the most remarkable institution of the sort
in Europe. There are--or rather there were, at the date of the beginning
of this history--three partners in Meeson's--Meeson himself, the managing
partner; Mr. Addison, and Mr. Roscoe--and people in Birmingham used to
say that there were others interested in the affair, for Meeson's was a
"company" (limited).

However this may be, Meeson and Co. was undoubtedly a commercial marvel.
It employed more than two thousand hands; and its works, lit throughout
with the electric light, cover two acres and a quarter of land. One
hundred commercial travellers, at three pounds a week and a commission,
went forth east and west, and north and south, to sell the books of
Meeson (which were largely religious in their nature) in all lands; and
five-and-twenty tame authors (who were illustrated by thirteen tame
artists) sat--at salaries ranging from one to five hundred a year--in
vault-like hutches in the basement, and week by week poured out that
hat-work for which Meeson's was justly famous. Then there were editors
and vice-editors, and heads of the various departments, and sub-heads,
and financial secretaries, and readers, and many managers; but what their
names were no man knew, because at Meeson's all the employees of the
great house were known by numbers; personalities and personal
responsibility being the abomination of the firm. Nor was it allowed to