After six months his stock had increased to £25. "This stock I deemed too great to be buried in Featherstone Street; and a shop and parlor being to let in Chiswell Street, No. 46, I took them." His business in the sale of books proved so prosperous, that, in a few weeks after removing to Chiswell Street, he disposed of his little stock of leather and altogether abandoned the _gentle craft_. At this time his stock consisted almost entirely of divinity, and for a year or two he "conscientiously destroyed such books as fell into his hands as were written by free-thinkers: he would neither read them himself, nor sell them to others." He makes some curious and sagacious remarks on bargain-hunters who frequented his shop at this time, while his stock was low and poor, and who in their craze after "bargains" often paid him double the price for dirty old books that he afterward charged when he had a larger stock, and had adopted the principle of selling every book at its lowest paying price. These people, he observed, forsook his shop as soon as he began to introduce better order and to appear "respectable!"[3] He had not been long in Chiswell Street, before both his wife and himself were seized with fever. She died and was buried without his having once seen her after her illness. The shop was left in the care of a boy, his house was put in charge of nurses, who robbed him of his linen and other articles, kept themselves drunk with gin, and would have left him to perish. The timely presence of his sister saved his life, and several Wesleyan friends saved him from ruin by locking up his shop, which the nurses and boy together would soon have emptied. Although he wrote the whole story in after-years in a vein of flippant sarcasm and irreverence for religion, he was constrained to acknowledge his great obligation to the friends whose religion prompted them thus to act the good Samaritan to him in his dire extremity. "The above gentlemen," he says, "not only took care of my shop, but also advanced money to pay such expenses as occurred; and as my wife was dead, they assisted in making my will in favor of my mother." "These worthy gentlemen," he adds, "belong to Mr. Wesley's Society (and notwithstanding they have imbibed many enthusiastic whims), yet would they be an honor to any society, and are a credit to human nature." [3] "Bibliomaniacs" will be interested to learn the price of certain books at this date, 1775. Lackington says: "Martyn's 'Dictionary of Natural History' sold for £15 15s., which then stood in my catalogue at £4 15s.; Pilkington's 'Dictionary of Painters,' £7 7s., usually sold at three; Francis's 'Horace,' £2 11s. At Sir George Colebrook's sale the 8vo edition of the 'Tatler' sold for _two guineas and a half_. At a sale a few weeks since, Rapin's History in folio, the two first vols. only, sold for upward of £5."