nscious of all
the awful responsibilities which "The Capitalist" was entailing on him,
knowing no more of "The Capitalist" than he did of the last loan of the
Rothschilds.

Difficult was it for all other human nature, save my father's, not to
breathe an indignant anathema on the scheming head of the brother-in-law
who had thus violated the most sacred obligations of trust and kindred,
and so entangled an unsuspecting recluse. But, to give even Jack Tibbets
his due, he had firmly convinced himself that "The Capitalist" would
make my father's fortune; and if he did not announce to him the strange
and anomalous development into which the original sleeping chrysalis of
the "Literary Times" had taken portentous wing, it was purely and wholly
in the knowledge that my father's "prejudices," as he termed them, would
stand in the way of his becoming a Creesus. And, in fact, Uncle Jack
had believed so heartily in his own project that he had put himself
thoroughly into Mr. Peck's power, signed bills, in his own name, to
some fabulous amount, and was actually now in the Fleet, whence his
penitential and despairing confession was dated, arriving simultaneously
with a short letter from Mr. Peck, wherein that respectable printer
apprised my father that he had continued, at his own risk, the
publication of "The Capitalist" as far as a prudent care for his family
would permit; that he need not say that a new daily journal was a very
vast experiment; that the expense of such a paper as "The Capitalist"
was immeasurably greater than that of a mere literary periodical, as
originally suggested; and that now, being constrained to come upon
the shareholders for the sums he had advanced, amounting to
several thousands, he requested my father to settle with him
immediately,--delicately implying that Mr. Caxton himself might settle
as he could with the other shareholders, most of whom, he grieved to
add, he had been misled by Mr. Tibbets into believing to be men of
substance, when in reality they were men of straw!

Nor was this all the evil. The "Great Anti-Bookseller Publishing
Society," which had maintained a struggling existence, evinced by
advertisements of sundry forthcoming works of solid interest and
enduring nature, wherein, out of a long list, amidst a pompous array of
"Poems;" "Dramas not intended for the Stage;" "Essays by Phileutheros,
Philanthropos, Philopolis, Philodemus, and Philalethes," stood
prominently forth "The History of