Another yearly event which became fixed in my mind was the appearance of Dr. Cumming to speak on the coming end of the world. There was a wealthy lady of Amberley who was a great believer in Dr. Cumming, and each year he came down and stayed with her and always delivered one of his unfulfilled prophecies. It was my duty to take the tickets and see the audience into their seats, but, as the audience year by year grew smaller by degrees and beautifully less, this was very easy work. Like most moderate-sized towns at this period, Stroud had its Young Men's Institute, of which I was a member, and it was the custom during the winter to have lectures, etc. I well remember the great success that always attended the lectures given by George Dawson, a preacher, lecturer and politician, and George Grossmith, the father of the well-known actor in Gilbert and Sullivan's plays. These lectures were usually of a literary or biographical character and undoubtedly laid the foundations for thought and study in the minds of those who listened to them. During my apprenticeship, my master, Mr. John Clark, was sometimes very exacting, and I know I had to thank Mrs. Clark and some of their daughters for helping to an extent to ease my work, and for making my strenuous life run smoothly. Part of my work was to learn printing. This I did, and was able to set up the type of a volume of sermons by a local vicar. The volume made no reputation, either for the vicar or the producer of the work. It was, however, in the buying and selling of books that I was most interested. These were the great days of the poets, who then had large sales, Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy," I think the greatest. What a change from then to now! I have no doubt that if you asked for this book to-day in a bookseller's shop no one would know of its existence, but, without doubt, those of Tupper and other poets were the principal books given as presents. I remember that Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," published by Edward Moxon in 1864, even in such a small town as Stroud had a large sale. I understand that 50,000 copies of this book were sold during the first year of its publication. There is one thing I was greatly blessed with--a good memory; and I can safely say I knew every book in our stock. When a traveller came round for orders, I was always stationed near my master and the traveller and if an order was being given I had to say whether the book was in stock or not. Those were also the days when booksellers sold patent medicines, in which a large trade was done; especially with such articles as Holloway's, Morrison's, and other pills, with various preparations to cure every disease under the sun.