other's houses, and after a nice satisfying dinner we proceeded
to pipes and paths of pleasantness, and to planning the contents for the
next number of our paper.

Large and hearty was the hilarity at these monthly meetings, and I
think I may say that the talk was interesting and smart. Mr. J.H.
Chamberlain was often positively brilliant in his little sallies of
speech, whilst Mr. J.T. Bunce would put in dry, sententious words of wit
and wisdom. Mr. G.J. Johnson laid down the law with pungent perspicuity,
and Mr. William Harris was amusingly epigrammatic. Mr. Sam Timmins on
these occasions was ever ready with an apt remark, very often containing
an apt quotation, and Mr. Sebastian Evans smoked and laughed much, made
incisive little observations, and drew sketches on blotting paper.

As we were all more or less interested in or concerned with the most
important matters that were then going on in the town, there was much to
be said that was worth saying and hearing. Even in the wheels that were
within wheels some of the _Town Crier_ men had spokes. A bank could not
break without some of us being concerned in the smash, and I remember
to my sorrow that when the Birmingham Banking Company came to grief I
was an unfortunate shareholder.

I do not think it necessary to say much more concerning the early days
of the publication in question. Its first promoters became busy, and, in
some cases, important men as time went on, and gradually they had to
give up their connection with a periodical whose pages for some years
they had done so much to enliven and adorn. The _Town Crier_, I think it
will be admitted, did good work in its own peculiar way, and those who
remain of its early promoters (and the small number has been thinned by
the death of Mr. J.H. Chamberlain and Mr. J.T. Bunce) need not be
ashamed to speak with the enemy at the gate--I mean, to own their former
connection with a publication which was not regarded as being
discreditable to its contributors, or to the town.

One matter in connection with the publication of the _Town Crier_ may be
mentioned as being curious, and perhaps a little surprising. It is
this: that during the many years that the paper was conducted by its
original promoters it steered clear of libel actions. In only one case
was an action even threatened, and this was disposed of by an accepted
little explanation and apology. We often used to hear rumours that
Alderman, Councillor, or Mr. Somebody