would permit; that he need not say that a new daily journal was a very
vast experiment; that the expense of such a paper as "The Capitalist" was
immeasurably greater than that of a mere literary periodical, as
originally suggested; and that now, being constrained to come upon the
shareholders for the sums he had advanced, amounting to several
thousands, he requested my father to settle with him immediately,--
delicately implying that Mr. Caxton himself might settle as he could with
the other shareholders, most of whom, he grieved to add, he had been
misled by Mr. Tibbets into believing to be men of substance, when in
reality they were men of straw!

Nor was this all the evil. The "Great Anti-Bookseller Publishing
Society," which had maintained a struggling existence, evinced by
advertisements of sundry forthcoming works of solid interest and enduring
nature, wherein, out of a long list, amidst a pompous array of "Poems;"
"Dramas not intended for the Stage;" "Essays by Phileutheros,
Philanthropos, Philopolis, Philodemus, and Philalethes," stood
prominently forth "The History of Human Error, Vols. I. and II., quarto,
with illustrations,"--the "Anti-Bookseller Society," I say, that had
hitherto evinced nascent and budding life by these exfoliations from its
slender stem, died of a sudden blight the moment its sun, in the shape of
Uncle Jack, set in the Cimmerian regions of the Fleet; and a polite
letter from another printer (O William Caxton, William Caxton, fatal
progenitor!) informing my father of this event, stated complimentarily
that it was to him, "as the most respectable member of the Association,"
that the said printer would be compelled to look for expenses incurred,
not only in the very costly edition of the "History of Human Error," but
for those incurred in the print and paper devoted to "Poems," "Dramas not
intended for the Stage," "Essays by Phileutheros, Philanthropos,
Philopolis, Philodemus, and Philalethes," with sundry other works, no