g in either of those lines. Before long I had
two men at work. But my workmen were not so faithful as they should
have been, and it cost me more to print my works myself, than it had
done to get them printed by others. I got a foreman, but he used my
office to carry on a business of his own, instead of doing what he could
for mine, and I was obliged to turn him off, and pay him a considerable
sum to keep him from troubling me with a law-suit. A short time after, a
very unpromising-looking young man came and asked me for a place in my
printing establishment. He was hardly a young man, in fact, but just a
half-taught random-looking kind of boy. I asked what he could do. To my
unspeakable astonishment he told me that the place he wanted was that of
foreman. I smiled, and looked on the poor creature as a simpleton. But
though he seemed a little disconcerted, he was not to be abashed. He
told me, that if I would give him a trial, he would let me see whether
he could manage the office or not. "But how can you manage the men?"
said I. Nothing however would satisfy the poor boy but a trial, and I,
under some kind of influence, agreed to give him one. What the men
thought when he took his place, I don't know; but they seemed to act on
the principle, that as I had made him foreman, they must obey his
orders; and obey him they did, and to my agreeable surprise, everything
went on in a satisfactory manner. The youthful foreman, who turned out
to be a sensible, modest, hard-working, honest young man, did well from
the first, and improved every year, and remained with me, giving
satisfaction both to me and to my men, so long as I continued in
business.

I had many fearful trials to pass through after I offended the leading
members of my congregation by giving up singing and prayer at public
meetings, and a heavy loss entailed on me by the dishonesty of one of
those leading members was not the least.

Ever since the time when I first became an author, I had acted as my own
publisher and bookseller, sending out parcels to my friends, keeping
accounts, and doing the whole work of a Book-room. When I engaged to be
minister of the church in Newcastle, and became servant of the
newly-formed churches all over the country, Mr. Blackwell, the printer
referred to on page 175, advised me to put the book-selling business
into the hands of Mr. Townsend, another leading official of the church.
"You have work enough," said he, "and too much, in pr