Having, at the age of twenty-four, married Mary Abbott, he became possessed of additional means for carrying out his publishing schemes.

Cheap illustrated periodicals began to issue from the press under his superintendence, and copies were multiplied by the hundred thousand.

He never forgot that he had been a working man, and one of the first publications he started was called The Working Man’s Friend.

It is not necessary to say more.  Though John Cassell died comparatively young—­he was only forty-eight when his death took place in 1865—­he had done a grand life’s work; and the soundness of his judgment is shown by the fact that works which he planned retain their hold upon the people to this day.

John Cassell had his ambitions, but they were of a very simple kind.

“I started in life with one ambition,” he said, “and that was to have a clean shirt every day of my life; this I have accomplished now for some years; but I have a second ambition, and that is to be an MAP., and represent the people’s cause; then I shall be public property, and you may do what you like with me.”  This latter desire he would doubtless have realised but for his early decease.

“A BRAVE, FEARLESS SORT OF LASS.”

THE STORY OF GRACE DARLING.

She was not much of a scholar, she could not spell as well as a girl in the third standard, she lived a quiet life quite out of the busy world; and yet Grace Darling’s name is now a household word.

Let us see how that has come about.

William Darling, Grace’s father, was keeper of the Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands, off the coast of Northumberland.  Longstone is a desolate rock, swept by the northern gales; and woe betide the ship driven on its pitiless shores!

Mr. Darling and his family had saved the lives of many persons who had been shipwrecked ere that memorable day of which I will tell you.

On the night of the 5th September, 1838, the steamer Forfarshire, bound from Hull to Dundee, was caught in a terrific storm off the Farne Islands.  Her machinery became damaged and all but useless, and the vessel drifted till the sound of the breakers told sixty-three persons composing the passengers and crew that death was near at hand.

[Illustration:  Longstone Lighthouse.]

The captain made every effort to run the ship in between the Islands and the mainland, but in vain; and about three o’clock on the morning of the 6th September the vessel struck on the rock with a sickening crash.

A boat was lowered, into which nine of the passengers got safely, whilst others lost their lives in attempting to do so.  These nine were saved during the day by a passing vessel.

The Forfarshire meantime was the sport of the waves, which threatened every minute to smash her in pieces.

Before long, indeed, one wave mightier than the rest lifted her bodily on to the sharp rocks and broke her in two.  Her after-part was swept away, and the captain, his wife, and those who were in that portion of the vessel, were drowned.  The fore-part meantime remained fast on the rocks, lashed by the furious billows.