mas repast.

"I think," said he to his disappointed spouse, "that I have acted
wisely; for had I bought a dinner we should have eaten it to-morrow, and
the pleasure would have been soon over; but should we live fifty years
longer we shall have the 'Night Thoughts' to feast upon."

It was his love of books that gave him abundant Christmas dinners for
the rest of his life. Having hired a little shop in which to sell the
shoes made by himself and his wife, it occurred to him that he could
employ the spare room in selling old books, his chief motive being to
have a chance to read the books before he sold them. Beginning with a
stock of half a hundred volumes, chiefly of divinity, he invested all
his earnings in this new branch, and in six months he found his stock of
books had increased fivefold. He abandoned his shoemaking, moved into
larger premises, and was soon a thriving bookseller. He was scrupulous
not to sell any book which he thought calculated to injure its readers,
although about this time he found the Methodist Society somewhat too
strict for him. He makes a curious remark on this subject:--

"I well remember," he says, "that some years before, Mr. Wesley told his
society at Bristol, in my hearing, that he could never keep a bookseller
six months in his flock."

His trade increased with astonishing rapidity, and the reason was that
he knew how to buy and sell. He abandoned many of the old usages and
traditions of the book trade. He gave no credit, which was itself a
startling innovation; but his master-stroke was selling every book at
the lowest price he could afford, thus giving his customers a fair
portion of the benefit of his knowledge and activity. He appears to have
begun the system by which books have now become a part of the furniture
of every house. He bought with extraordinary boldness, spending
sometimes as much as sixty thousand dollars in an afternoon's sale.

As soon as he began to live with some liberality kind friends foretold
his speedy ruin. Or, as he says:--

"When by the advice of that eminent physician, Dr. Lettsom, I purchased
a horse, and saved my life by the exercise it afforded me, the old
adage, 'Set a beggar on horseback and he'll ride to the devil,' was
deemed fully verified."

But his one horse became two horses, and his chaise a chariot with
liveried servants, in which vehicle, one summer, he made the round of
the places in which he had lived as a shoemaker, called upon his o