No apology is needed for opening a temperance department in THE QUIVER, for in the story of the temperance reformation the name of John Cassell will assuredly always hold an honoured place. At the time when he was enlisted in the ranks--1835--as a youth of seventeen, the movement had few friends and many opponents. Having once signed the "teetotal pledge," Cassell never deserted, but, on the contrary, became one of the most persuasive advocates the cause has ever had. He itinerated through the length and breadth of the land, and, under the name of "The Manchester Carpenter," gained a large number of adherents, some of whom subsequently achieved great reputations as temperance leaders. Even before Cassell had settled down in London as a publisher, he had learnt to value the printing press as an aid to temperance work, and not a few of the pamphlets, tracts, and broadsheets which played such an important part in the early days of the propaganda, owed their origin to his enterprising initiative. By-and-by he was in a position to command his own printing machines, and as early as March, 1846, he launched the _Teetotal Times and Monthly Temperance Messenger_, which was followed in July, 1848, by the _Standard of Freedom_, of which a temperance column was a leading feature. Anyone who takes the trouble to look over these early publications cannot fail to be struck by the comprehensive and statesmanlike grip of the drink difficulty which they present. It was to John Cassell that Richard Cobden wrote in 1849:--"I don't know how it is that I have never made the plunge and joined the teetotallers. Nobody has more faith than I in the truth of your doctrine, both from a physical and moral point of view, for the more work I have had to do the more I have resorted to the pump and the teapot. As for the moral bearings of the question, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that all other reforms together would fail to confer as great blessings upon the masses as that of weaning them from intoxicating drinks." Cassell passed away at the early age of forty-eight, on April 2nd, 1865, on the same day as Cobden himself, whose friendship he had enjoyed for nearly twenty years. [Illustration: JOHN CASSELL. (_Temperance Leader and Founder of "The Quiver."_)] COMING EVENTS.