In those days our pleasures and our amusements were fewer, but impressed us more.  I remember how eagerly the coloured pictures of the Christmas numbers of the pictorial papers were looked forward to, talked of, criticised, admired, framed and hung up.  I remember too, the excitements of Saint Valentine’s Day, Shrove Tuesday, April Fool’s Day, May Day and the Morris (Molly) dancers; and the Fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Day.  I remember also the peripatetic knife grinder and his trundling machine, the muffin man, the pedlar and his wares, the furmity wheat vendor, who trudged along with his welcome cry of “Frummitty!” from door to door.  Those were pleasant and innocent excitements.  We have other things to engage us now, but I sometimes think all is not gain that the march of progress brings.

Young people then had fewer books to read, but read them thoroughly.  What excitement and discussion attended the monthly instalments of Dickens’ novels in All the Year Round; how eagerly they were looked for.  Lucky he or she who had heard the great master read himself in public.  His books were read in our homes, often aloud to the family circle by paterfamilias, and moved us to laughter or tears.  I never now see our young people, or their elders either, affected by an author as we were then by the power of Dickens.  He was a new force and his pages kindled in our hearts a vivid feeling for the poor and their wrongs.

Scott’s Waverley Novels, too, aroused our enthusiasm.  In the early sixties a cheap edition appeared, and cheap editions were rare things then.  It was published, if I remember aright, at two shillings per volume; an event that stirred the country.  My father brought each volume home as it came out.  I remember it well; a pale, creamy-coloured paper cover, good type, good paper.  What treasures they were, and only two shillings!  I was a little child when an important movement for the cheapening of books began.  In 1852 Charles Dickens presided at a meeting of authors and others against the coercive regulations of the Booksellers’ Association which maintained their excessive profits.  Herbert Spencer and Miss Evans (George Eliot) took a prominent part in this meeting and drafted the resolutions which were passed.  The ultimate effect of this meeting was that the question between the authors and the booksellers was referred to Lord Campbell as arbitrator.  He gave a decision against the booksellers; and there were consequently abolished such of the trade regulations as had interdicted the sale of books at lower rates of profit than those authorised by the Booksellers’ Association.