Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/58

  Family Paper, and had an arrangement for the division of the profits with Petter and Galpin after a certain rate of interest on the capital had been paid, so that this was at first rather a working alliance than a partnership. Nevertheless, Petter and Galpin removed their business from Playhouse Yard to Nos. 1 and 2 La Belle Sauvage, which they rebuilt as a printing office. For some time, besides printing the Cassell publications, they carried on a separate business as general printers. Full and formal partnership came a few years later when the concern had developed still more largely. Then Cassell, his affairs once more prospering, repurchased the copyrights taken by Kent and Co. and restored them to La Belle Sauvage. From that time onward the tradition he had already created there was never broken.

But before this, and during the semi-partnership of Cassell with Petter and Galpin, some characteristic Cassell work was done: The "Illustrated Family Bible," for example, personally regarded by Cassell as the most important of his early enterprises, along with the "Altar of the Household," a compilation by a number of well-known divines, which had a considerable vogue. The Bible, with its 900 illustrations, was issued in penny parts over a period of four years, and cost about £100,000 to produce. The early numbers reached a sale of 300,000. They had a universal popularity, and were found in every sort of house. In the parish of Clerkenwell, according to the vicar, Mr. Maguire, 5,182 copies were sold in one year. Into the backwoods of America, or wherever in the world the English language was read—and into some places where it was not—the "Illustrated Family Bible" made its way. A missionary in the Far West sent the Red Indian names of ten subscribers; the engravings would "command their interest and attention where nothing else will." Dr. Perkins, a missionary in Persia, described the fascinated interest with which his pupils recognized in the pictures familiar likenesses of customs and costumes still common in their land. He also found that his most