Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/89



Cassell died leaving to his partners something more than a large business. He bequeathed to them an ideal. His ambition had been to bring good literature to the millions who did the rough work of the world, to project some ray from the golden lamp athwart the bricklayer's hod and the miner's pick. Fortunately his legacy descended to men who were able and eager to realize it.

A memoir of Cassell which appeared in the Illustrated Family Paper was censured by the Bookseller of that era on two grounds. One was that full justice had not been done to the commercial talents of his surviving partners, to whom the success of the firm was said to be largely owing; the other, that some of the commercial failures of Cassell's earlier time were even more praiseworthy than his greatest successes, since they were the best evidence of his sincere resolve at all costs to enable men to break through "poverty's unconquerable bar" into the realms of knowledge. However mistaken the Family Paper may have been in its too generous application of the rule de mortuis, Cassell himself never failed to give to Fetter and Galpin full credit for their contributions to the common stock. Their qualities certainly blended into a happy business combination which assured to the House a long period of extraordinary prosperity.

George William Fetter, a Devonian, born at Barnstaple in 1823, narrowly escaped becoming a country draper. A moneyed aunt snatched the apprentice away from the counter and secured for him a partnership with a Mr, Duff, printer, of Playhouse Yard. Mr. Duff retired, or was bought out, and Petter, looking about for a partner, was introduced by Mr. Pare, the Dublin engineer, to