Note 233 — Chapter IX

"That is no doubt immense, our expenses being necessarily large, and the travelling party being always five." Another source of profit was the sale of the copies of the several Readings prepared by himself. "Our people alone sell eight, ten, and twelve dozen a night." A later letter says: "The men with the reading books were sold out, for about the twentieth time, at Manchester. Eleven dozen of the Poor Traveller, Boots, and Gamp being sold in about ten minutes, they had no more left; and Manchester became green with the little tracts, in every bookshop, outside every omnibus, and passing along every street. The sale of them, apart from us, must be very great." "Did I tell you," he writes in another letter, "that the agents for our tickets who are also booksellers, say very generally that the readings decidedly increase the sale of the books they are taken from? We were first told of this by a Mr. Parke, a wealthy old gentleman in a very large way at Wolverhampton, who did all the business for love, and would not take a farthing. Since then, we have constantly come upon it; and M'Glashin and Gill at Dublin were very strong about it indeed."