“During this wet winter I had to set out at five every Saturday morning (carrying a burthen of three pounds’ weight to thirty), open shop at ten, starve in it all day upon bread, cheese, and half a pint of ale; take from 1_s._ to 6_s._, shut up at four, and by trudging through the deep roads and the solitary night five hours more, arrive at Nottingham by nine, carrying a burthen from three to thirty pounds, where I always found a mess of milk porridge by the fire, prepared by my valuable sister. “Nothing short of a surprising resolution and rigid economy could have carried me through this dreadful scene.” But Hutton did not despair; he lived to a good old age, and was a wealthy man. The life of Kelly, the London publisher, is full of interest. Thomas Kelly was born at Chevening, in Kent, on the 7th of January, 1779. His father was a shepherd, who, having received a jointure of £200 with his wife, risked the capital first in a little country inn, and afterwards in leasing a small farm of about thirty acres of cold, wet land, where he led a starving, struggling life during the remainder of his days. When only twelve years old, barely able to read and write, young Kelly was taken from school and put to the hard work of the farm, leading the team or keeping the flock; but he was not strong enough to handle the plough. The fatigue of this life, and its misery, were so vividly impressed upon his memory, that he could never be persuaded to revisit the neighbourhood in after-life; and though at the time he endeavoured to conceal his feelings from his family, the bitterness of his reflections involuntarily betrayed his wishes. He fretted in the daytime until he could not lie quietly in his bed at night; and early one morning he was discovered in a somnambulent state in the chimney of an empty bedroom, “on,” as he said, “his road to London.” After this, his parents readily consented that he should try to make his way elsewhere, and a situation was obtained for him in the counting-house of a Lambeth brewer. After about three years’ service here the business failed, and he was recommended to Alexander Hogg, bookseller, of Paternoster Row. The terms of his engagement were those of an ordinary domestic servant; he was to board and lodge on the premises, and to receive £10 yearly; but his lodging, or, at all events, his bed, was under the shop counter. Alexander Hogg, of 16, Paternoster Row, had been a journeyman to Cooke, and had very successfully followed the publication of “Number” books. In the trade he was looked upon as an unequalled “puffer;” and when the sale of a book began to slacken, he was wont to employ some ingenious scribe to draw up a taking title, and the work, though otherwise unaltered, was brought out in a “new edition,” as, according to a formula, the “Production of a Society of Gentlemen: the whole revised, corrected, and improved by Walter Thornton, Esq., M.A., and other gentlemen.”