Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/94

 thinking he was unheard by the senior partner, said in his loud, piercing and emphatic voice: "It's all very well for Petter to talk about war in that way, but he should remember the thousands we have made out of the Franco-German War!" As it happened, Petter was still in the room, and within hearing, and, instead of laughing off the contretemps, waxed full of wrath at Jeffery's outspokenness.

Another member of the staff relates that he once wrote a paragraph for the Live Stock Journal, one of the firm's papers, about the "Lion Sermon" annually preached in a City church to commemorate Sir John Gayer's escape from a lion in the seventeenth century. The incident was not treated very seriously, and a friend of Petter's with a keen nose for heresy wrote complaining that one of his papers was casting doubt or ridicule upon the story of Daniel in the lions' den. So Petter sent for the author, who without difficulty persuaded him that no reference was made or implied to the Biblical story. Having intimated that he was quite satisfied, Petter begged the contributor to co-operate with him in giving a religious tone to the Live Stock Journal!

Nevertheless, the apparently stilted and strait-laced Petter was not only a wonderfully effective business man, but a keen sympathizer with Cassell's ideal. He kept it in view throughout his connexion with the House, and in his last public speech held it up for the emulation of their successors, "as one and another of the old guard fell out of the ranks." Amid all the great tasks he undertook and carried out with such success, nothing gave him so much pride as the publication of Lord Shaftesbury's "Life." A newspaper writer remarked, when Petter went into retirement, that it must be consolation to him to know that "his work had been so prolific of good"—and the effort he selected for special praise was the Shaftesbury. Without Petter, he said, there would have been no "Life," for it was Petter who persuaded Lord Shaftesbury to agree and Edwin Hodder to write the book. There can