appearance at ordination services, and openings of
chapels, and was to be seen at May Meetings when in town, where
occasionally his criticisms were of a freer order than is usually met
with at such places.

'The Bungay Press,' wrote a correspondent of the _Bookseller_, on the
death of Mr. Charles Childs, who had succeeded his father in the
business, 'has been long known for its careful and excellent work.
Established some short time before the commencement of the present
century, its founder had, for twenty years, limited its productions to
serial publications and books of a popular and useful character, and in
the year 1823, soon after Mr. John Childs had taken control of the
business, upwards of twenty wooden presses were working, at long hours,
to supply the rapidly-increasing demand for such works as folio Bibles,
universal histories, domestic medicine books, and other publications then
issuing in one and two shilling numbers from the press.' Originally Mr.
Childs had been in a grocer's shop at Norwich. There he was met with by
a Mr. Brightley, a printer and publisher, who, originally a schoolmaster
at Beccles, had suggested to young Childs that he had better come and
help him at Bungay than waste his time behind a counter. Fortunately for
them both the young man acceded to the proposal, and travelled all over
England driving tandem, and doing everywhere what we should now call a
roaring trade. Then he married Mr. Brightley's daughter, and became a
partner in the firm, which was known as that of John and R. Childs, and,
latterly of Childs and Son. 'Uncle Robert,' as I used to hear him
called, was little known out of the Bungay circle. He had a nice house,
and lived comfortably, marrying, after a long courtship, the only one of
the Stricklands who was not a writer. Agnes was often a visitor at
Bungay, and not a little shocked at the atrocious after-dinner talk of
the Bungay Radicals. 'Do you not think,' said she, in her somewhat
stilted and tragic style of talk, one day, to a literary man who was
seated next her, author of a French dictionary which the Childses were
printing at the time--'Do you not think it was a cruel and wicked act to
murder the sainted and unfortunate Charles I.?' 'Why, ma'am,' stuttered
the author, while the dinner-party were silent, 'I'd have p-p-poisoned
him.' The gifted authoress talked no more that day. Naturally, as a
lad, seeing so much of Bungay, I wished to be a printer, but Mr