anyone having dealings with these items ever to see the same number
twice, presumably for fear lest the number should remember that he was a
man and a brother, and his heart should melt towards the unfortunate, and
the financial interests of Meeson's should suffer. In short, Meeson's was
an establishment created for and devoted to money-making, and the fact
was kept studiously and even insolently before the eyes of everybody
connected with it--which was, of course, as it should be, in this happy
land of commerce. After all that has been written, the reader will not be
surprised to learn that the partners in Meeson's were rich beyond the
dreams of avarice. Their palaces would have been a wonder even in ancient
Babylon, and would have excited admiration in the corruptest and most
luxurious days of Rome. Where could one see such horses, such carriages,
such galleries of sculpture or such collections of costly gems as at the
palatial halls of Messrs. Meeson, Addison, and Roscoe?

"And to think," as the Mighty Meeson himself would say, with a lordly
wave of his right hand, to some astonished wretch of an author whom he
has chosen to overwhelm with the sight of this magnificence, "to think
that all this comes out of the brains of chaps like you! Why, young man,
I tell you that if all the money that has been paid to you scribblers
since the days of Elizabeth were added together it would not come up to
my little pile; but, mind you, it ain't so much fiction that has done the
trick--it's religion. It's piety as pays, especially when it's printed."

Then the unsophisticated youth would go away, his heart too full for
words, but pondering how these things were, and by-and-by he would pass
into the Meeson melting-pot and learn something about it.

One day King Meeson sat in his counting house counting out his money, or,
at least, looking over the books of the firm. He was in a very bad