The social entertainments and lectures provided by William Nelson at an early stage for his employés have already been noticed; but in the spring of 1868 he extended his generous sympathy over an ampler field, and organized a _fête_ for the whole journeymen printers and stereotypers of Edinburgh. The invitation met with a cordial response, and the appearance presented by the assembled guests in the galleries of the Museum of Science and Art was the theme of admiring comment. They were summoned to this novel social gathering by one who justly claimed recognition as an employer “who set a high value upon whatever is calculated to foster kindly feelings between man and man.” The invitation said: “For one evening let us lay aside care or irksome duty, and come out with those we love best, and let us look each other fairly in the face. In the matter of head we do not much differ; at heart we are agreed. We need to have the bow unstrung occasionally. Let us do so in company for once, and see if we can help each other to a happy evening.” The answer to this was the assembly of upwards of a thousand workmen, with their wives and sweethearts, in the Industrial Museum, to listen to a lecture by Mr. W. H. Davenport Adams, on the noble art in the service of which they were enlisted; and to enjoy the humour and pathos of some of Scotland’s choicest national songs, including Burns’s proud protest, which could there be appreciated without any thought of social wrong--“A man’s a man for a’ that!” The _Scottish Typographical Circular_, in its comments on this unique gathering, remarked: “Here were a thousand men, nearly all in superfine black coats and spotless shirt-fronts; a thousand women in tasteful dresses and bonnets of the latest mode, setting off the comely features of the printers’ wives, or the fresh, pretty faces of their sweethearts; and in all this great mass of the ‘lower orders’ not a word out of joint; not a gesture of impatience; no crowding, jostling, or selfish preferring of one’s own enjoyment; nothing but courtesy and that perfect good breeding which prompts men to give their neighbour’s comfort the precedence of their own convenience.” It was a gathering that Scotland might be proud of, whether we assign to the host or the guests the chief prominence. The matter of dress, to which the critic so specially directed attention, was not unworthy of note as an evidence of provident thrift, and of the self-respect which is nowhere more fitting than in the skilled artisan.