The formes of type and the paper being ready, the pressmen put the formes on the press-bed, and after “making ready” the pages of type to ensure a uniform impression and colour on the printed sheet, proceeded to work off the formes. In the early days of last century, before the advent of the steam-printing machine, the work of the hand-pressmen must have been a constant strain on their physical powers. A “token” of 250 sheets per hour was the ordinary output; they had to lay the sheet of paper on the tympan and roll it under the press, pull the bar to take the impression, roll back, and lift off the printed sheet—all this for 250 times an hour for ten or twelve hours each day was no light task. In those days also, prior to the invention of the hand-roller, the ink had to be put on the formes of type by means of hand-balls or “dabbers”; and this, too, took a much longer time. The sheets of a book having been thus printed, either by hand-press or by machine, were next sent to the drying-room, and hung over horizontal bars, one above the other, being put up or taken down by means of long peels. When thoroughly dried the sheets were subjected to a smoothing process between highly-glazed boards under great pressure, and were then ready for the bookbinder. What would a publisher of the present day say to the following? “The printing of ‘Sir Tristrem’ will be finished about the end of June; if you approve, it ought to lie two months before it is hot-pressed, and it could be published about the middle of October.”[46] The press-room was on the ground-flat, which on the introduction of steam-printing, about 1817, became the machine-room. In concluding this chapter mention may be made of a kind of democratic court common to every printing-house. This is called the “Chapel,” and its membership comprises all the journeymen. This “Chapel” is said to have originated in the time of William Caxton in one of the chapels at Westminster, and has thus an antiquity coeval with the beginning of printing in Britain. A Chapel meeting may be called at any time, either to preserve the employer’s property, or to settle a dispute regarding prices to be paid for special kinds of work. It is presided over by an experienced workman known as the “Father of the Chapel,” and its meetings are convened by another known as the “Clerk”; and any delinquent found guilty by his peers of a trespass or fault may be subjected to a fine, from which sentence there is no appeal. Should he decline to submit, he may be “sent to Coventry,” a position which he will find very uncomfortable. One Chapel dispute regarding the _Weekly Journal_ has been already referred to, but a previous one in 1803 may be noticed here, as told in a letter of Sir Walter Scott to Miss Seward:—