Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/515

PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS. 473 elsewhere. In this strait he exhibited much worldly wisdom, and invested half his little hoarding in a fine suit of clothes, purchased from one of the overseers, who happened to be a draper. In the following year, 1751, he took a better shop, next door to a Mr. Grace, a hosier, and in a quiet, undemonstrative manner, fell in love with his neigh- bour's niece. "Time gave us," he says, "numberless opportunities of observing each other's actions, and trying the tenour of conduct by the touchstone of prudence. Courtship was often a disguise. We had seen each other when disguise was useless. Besides, nature had given to few women a less portion of deceit." The uncle at length consented to the match, and, with Sarah, Hutton received a dowry of ;ioo; and, as he had already amassed 200 of his own, from this happy moment his fortunes ran smoothly upwards. He now increased an otherwise profitable trade by starting a circulating library perhaps the first that was attempted in the provinces ; and about this same time, 1753, he acquired a very useful friend in the person of Robert Bage, the paper-maker, and undertook the retail portion of the paper business. " From this small hint," he says, " I followed the stroke forty years, and acquired an ample fortune." And yet, though waxing yearly richer and richer, he adds, " I never could bear the thought of living to the extent of my income. I never omitted to take stock or regulate my annual expenses, so as to meet casual- ties and misfortunes." By degrees he became invested with civic dignities, and little by little he acquired the standing of a landed proprietor. Without neg- lecting his business he now found leisure for literary 30