As we were all more or less interested in or concerned with the most important matters that were then going on in the town, there was much to be said that was worth saying and hearing. Even in the wheels that were within wheels some of the _Town Crier_ men had spokes. A bank could not break without some of us being concerned in the smash, and I remember to my sorrow that when the Birmingham Banking Company came to grief I was an unfortunate shareholder. I do not think it necessary to say much more concerning the early days of the publication in question. Its first promoters became busy, and, in some cases, important men as time went on, and gradually they had to give up their connection with a periodical whose pages for some years they had done so much to enliven and adorn. The _Town Crier_, I think it will be admitted, did good work in its own peculiar way, and those who remain of its early promoters (and the small number has been thinned by the death of Mr. J.H. Chamberlain and Mr. J.T. Bunce) need not be ashamed to speak with the enemy at the gate--I mean, to own their former connection with a publication which was not regarded as being discreditable to its contributors, or to the town. One matter in connection with the publication of the _Town Crier_ may be mentioned as being curious, and perhaps a little surprising. It is this: that during the many years that the paper was conducted by its original promoters it steered clear of libel actions. In only one case was an action even threatened, and this was disposed of by an accepted little explanation and apology. We often used to hear rumours that Alderman, Councillor, or Mr. Somebody intended wreaking vengeance upon writers who had belaboured or ridiculed him; but these threats ended in nothing, and the first proprietors of the _Town Crier_ never had to pay even a farthing damages as the result of law proceedings. This is something to record, because papers of a satirical character necessarily sail pretty close to the wind in the way of provoking touchy people to fly to law to soothe their wounded feelings and pay out their supposed persecutors.