The First 100 Years: Flashbacks...

The first volume of The National Amateur was edited by Clement C. Chase. John Winslow Snyder was elected official editor by the 1878 Chicago meeting but declined. Several others declined, not knowing what was expected of them. Finally Mr. Chase was elected. The first issue, 9″x 12″, was in 3-column format in four pages. It contained a convention report, the president’s message, editorials and an article on “Early Campaigning” by A. J. Huss. The first issue had a two-page supplement containing an interview with the postmaster general paving the way for second-class entry. Amateur editors had claimed that the Proposed one cent postage would doom the association. The account of the convention was not official as the secretary was quoted as saying, “The minutes of the late NAPA convention are not for publication.”

Excerpts from accounts of the Washington, D. C., 1879 convention, about a presidential race between J. Edson Briggs and J. Austin Fynes: “Briggs never stepped out of his way to make a friend. He was incapable of flattery or guile. The youth who grasped his hand knew at once whether he was liked or disliked….

“Fynes differed in many respects. He never hesitated to confess his desire for the presidency, his personal participation in the campaign and his determination to win.

“Arriving in Washington, Fynes had only three supporters. Aware of this, most everyone ridiculed his chances. But Fynes was a giant, a politician, a Herculean amateur demagogue. He gained friends where Briggs made enemies. He mingled freely with all, spent money promiscuously, joked, laughed, chatted. Sympathy then began to take the place of ridicule.”

There were charges of bribery, bought votes (one delegate claimed he was offered $5). Some boasted Fynes had brought $300 to buy the convention. This was never proven, but some Fynes supporters may have been overexuberant.

“Briggs was invited to take the chair. Innocently did he fail to realize the impropriety of remaining or the propriety of vacating. Fynes moved the proxy votes be rejected and the convention elect the officers. Briggs rejected the motion on constitutional grounds and was rewarded by an appeal in which Fynes’ supporters was so vociferous that many could not gain recognition. Eventually the appeal was not sustained.

“A recess was taken to allow the committee time to count the proxy votes.The report the committee made was ludicrous, if not remarkable. It had been given a full hour to count the votes, but reported that more time was needed and even hinted that the task could not be performed during the week. A motion to throw out the proxy votes was repeated, and prevailed. The few on either side dissenting were powerless. There was every indication that the country-at-large was in favor of Briggs.

“Briggs occupied the chair, almost unconsciously. No obstacle remained in the way for the convention to elect the officers. No sooner had Briggs been nominated for the presidency when it was moved to close the nominations. The excitement became intense. Fynes grew pale and was unable to conceal his agitation. Many of his friends arose excitedly and gesticulated wildly but protestingly. But the motion received no second. Fynes and Arthur J. Huss were then nominated.” The vote: Briggs, 17; Fynes, 12; Huss, 3; Oswald L. Williams, 1. Total, 33. Necessary to elect, 17.

“The tellers communicated the result. Silence following the count was broken by cheers for Briggs amid intense excitement. A sharp dialogue occurred between Fynes and Williams. It is said unpublishable words passed, but all remarks were drowned by the hue and cry for reconsideration or another ballot.”

In 1891 at Philadelphia, a faction of the NAPA bolted the convention in a dispute over acceptance of proxy ballots. When the dissenters returned, they found the meeting recessed, so began their own session but were displaced by the resumption of the regular stated meeting. The bolters held their own election and banquet.

Dual conventions were held in 1892 in Boston and Buffalo, but by the following year the factions been were united. However, in some instances, it took years to dissipate the bitterness.

At the following convention in Chicago, the association acted on a resolution to place the name of Frank E. Schermerhom on the presidential roll. (Schermerhorn had been elected by the dissident group.) Following considerable and heated debate, filled with intense drama, force and earnestness, the resolution was approved, 15 to 13, several members refusing to vote.

But before the ruckus of 1891, at the opening of that convention, a very gallant action was taken. In appreciation for her services as official editor, Harriet Cox, the first young lady to serve in the second highest office, was presented with a diamond ring. The money for this purpose had been appropriated in an earlier session.

The 1878 (Chicago) conclave adopted the NAPA’s first permanent constitution, creating the laureate awards encouraging literary efforts. Each year the title of laureate was to be awarded to the best author of poems, essays, serials and sketches—the judges being persons of recognized note in the professional field. (Among those serving as judges have Edwin A. Markham, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Burton E. Stevenson, Charlotte Porter, Eugene Field, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Owen Wistar, Zona Gale, Julian Hawthorne, Charles Edward Stowe, Frank H. Converse, Edward W. Bok, Charles King, Horatio Alger, Jr., and Stephen Fiske.)

Cincinnati’s Emory Hotel in 1880 was the scene of a pillow fight that raged for half an hour in the hallway where the convention attendees were housed. The corridor of the third floor resembled a heavy snow fall-so thick were the feathers. The police were called, but the participants disappeared. An innocent victim who had slept soundly through all the commotion was aroused because the evidence was thickest at his door. The police made him pay $15 damages.

At various times the National Amateur Press Association has had unusual stimulus, sometimes bringing it out of an almost fatal doldrums. In 1882 an article in a very popular youth magazine, St. Nicholas, had such an effect, spreading the gospel to a national audience. In 1930, Edwin Hadley Smith and Vincent B. Haggerty engineered a boy printer recruitment program with cooperation from the Kelsey Press Company of Meriden, Conn. In 1966 a good article on hobby printing in Popular Science magazine produced vital printing members. Kelsey Press Company again cooperated in 1969 to bring in another large group of printers.

The year 1926 marked the semi-centennial of the National organization and great preparations were made to celebrate the anniversary. On July 3, the first day of the convention, the Fossils commemorated the survivors of the founding with a dinner at the Poor Richard Club, attended by forty amateurs, including ten who were there in 1876. They were: James M. Beck, J. Edson Briggs, James F. Duharnel, J. Austin Fynes, Charles C. Heuman, John Hosey, James D. Lee, Evan Reed Riale, Robert W. Smiley and Will W. Winslow.

But the NAPA was in bad shape. The hobby of amateur journalism is one that needs the warmth of companionship. In normal times, little licking flames sprout from the coals of old enthusiasms and of enthusiasms not yet fully ignited. In the varied years there were periods when the flames burned fiercely-but there have also been periods when the gray ashes covered the coals and the fire seemed out.

There was such a time from 1926 to 1928 when Louis C. Wills paid for the National Amateur, and the typo-strewn Tryout was the only regular journal. President Jacob Moidel had only one ambition: not to let the NAPA die on his hands in its 52nd year.

Only four persons attended the 1928 Niagara Falls convention. The next year was not encouraging, but in Boston (1930), the Haggerty-Smith alliance invested $276 in a recruiting program that netted 23 printers and 200 alumni members.

On November 22, 193l, the Amateur Printers Club was formed by Haggerty, George Andersen, Walter Stevenson and George Trainer. Shortly after Harold Segal, Ernest Pittaro and Ralph Babcock joined the informal club, all active printer-editors. In five years the NAPA had climbed from the depths. Niagara Falls, 1928, had four attendees; New York, 1933, had more than I 00. From July 1933 to January 1934, 235 issues of 70 papers had appeared.

One little remembered giant in the NAPA (and many, unfortunately, fall in this category) is W. Paul Cook, who learned the printing trade in Claremont, N. H. After two issues of the Monadnock Monthly, he became an itinerant printer, then settled in Hanover, N. H., issued several large and impressive numbers of the Monadnock. In 1906 he resumed his wanderings, but settled in Athol, Mass., in 1913. During the next twenty years he published The Vagrant, fifteen issues, one 148 pages, the last 312 pages 5×7. He became official editor in 1918-19 and published a volume of 331 pages, 9×13, at a time when the allowance from the treasury was $25 an issue.

Frank A. Kendall, of Prarie du Sac, Wisconsin, had a genuine love for typography and fine printing. His Torpedo was one of the finest examples of beautiful printing in our history. An “Old Cloister” edition of The Torpedo appeared in February 1907, set entirely in Cloister Black, printed in six colors. The cover was leather. The professional Inland Printer devoted a lengthy article to it and reproduced one of its pages. It was also displayed in many cities in offices of the American Type Founders. In July 1913 at Grand Rapids, Michigan, he was elected president, but died suddenly in November. The board of executive judges appointed his wife, the former Jennie Irene Maloney, who had established an enviable literary reputation in the association. Present-day members recall her as Jennie Irene Plasier.

In 1931 at St. Louis, a central mailing bureau was established for the first time. Publishers could send sufficient copies to cover the membership, and they would be posted collectively with other journals. This relieved publishers of the dreary chore of addressing envelopes, keeping addresses up to date, saving them the cost of envelopes and postage, plus the additional saving of precious time. The monthly packet of journals became endearingly known as the “Bundle.” It goes to every member in this country and overseas, where it is eagerly awaited, thoroughly read.

At the onset the cost was underwritten by Edwin Hadley Smith and Vincent B. Haggerty. Later it was supported in part by contributions from publishers, the deficit picked up by the association. In recent years the costs have been borne entirely by the NAPA. In days of increasing postal rates a single i ndividual mailing alone would cost a publisher approximately five times his annual dues.

The mailing manager holds a position that is the life-line of the organization. It is the most important appointment to be made by the president. The NAPA has been fortunate in finding capable and dedicated members who have handled the work and responsibility without complaint.

Conventioneers this year will not be visiting the Franklin Institute to see the most famous of all a.j. libraries as they did during our diamond jubilee. In lieu of such a pilgrimage, here is an up-dated history.

David W. Jagger, editor of the Collector and the Index, wanted to sell his 2000 amateur paper collection for the price of indexing. Edwin Hadley Smith paid the required $10 in 1897. These papers were enough to spark Smith’s collecting instinct. When he moved from Salt Lake City to New York in 1899, he had already acquired 7000 papers. During the next three years he added 13,000 more. He tried to catalog his journals during his spare time, but decided it would be better to resign his position and work full time on the collection. He had saved some money but the estimated six months stretched to a year and a half. He exhausted his funds, went into debt, was arrears in his rent, but doggedly continued, existing on one meal a day, sleeping on a packing crate in an unfurnished room-often working 18 hours a day, completing the task in the summer of 1904.

After having the collection bound (there were now 25,700 papers), he began to search for a place where the collection could be placed in order to make it available to other interested amateur journalists. His altruism was rewarded. On November 5, 1908, the Smith Collection was opened to the public at the Pratt Institute Public Library in Brooklyn. Five years later the collection was moved to the Pulitzer School of Journalism, Columbia University, at the request of the director, Dr. Talcott Williams. Charles C. Heuman, an ex-president of the Fossils, purchased the collection from Mr. Smith in March 1916. It then became known as the Fossil Library.

Two years previous to the purchase by Heuman, Smith had published his notice of retirement from amateur journalism. His “retirement” apparently was prompted by the failure of the Fossils to raise funds to give the collection a permanent home. Later sufficient monies were raised by voluntary means. The formal opening of the Fossil Library took place on October 10, 1916, in the New York Sun Building. Joseph Dana Miller was named librarian.

Smith remained inactive for fifteen years. The library suffered a similar fate. It was practically complete to 1915 and contained 29,500 papers, 750 books, 1800 clippings, 2200 photos, 4500 printed relics (ephemeral and 14,000 catalog cards. A new era began when Cyrus H. K. Curtis, the publisher of the Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal and other magazines, lent his weight to the suggestion of Leonard Tilden that the Fossil Library be housed in the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. A letter dated June 16, 193 1, to Heuman formally accepted the collection and stated that: “We shall house it permanently in the new Benjamin Franklin Memorial; it will be kept intact and will be in its own separate alcove in the library of the Franklin Institute….

Shortly before this event, Smith had once again become active. At the NAPA convention in 1933, he was elected an executive judge, but resigned when the president of the association, Harold Segal, asked that he take the position of librarian.

The Franklin Institute actually accepted the collection on April 6, 1934, through its librarian, Alfred Rigling. The collection then consisted of both the Fossil Library (items to 1915) and the National Amateur Press Association Library (items from 1931). These two were combined to form the Library of Amateur Journalism. The years 1916-1930 were not represented in either collection, so Smith set out to fill in the missing journals for those neglected years.

Attendees at the 60th convention in Oakland, California, learned that the NAPA Library contained 2200 papers, 100 books and additional printed clips and relics. Only six issues of the National Amateur were needed to complete the 1878-1935 file of the official organ. A year later Smith was able to report that the collection was complete.

At the 1940 convention, in grateful appreciation for his cooperation, Rigling was named an honorary member of the NAPA. His successor, Walter Pertuch, was later similarly honored.

When Edwin Hadley Smith died, March 3,1944, the NAPA librarianship passed to his wife, Nita Gerner Smith (daughter of one of the 1876 founders). In 1955 Bernice Spink took over from ailing Mrs. Smith. Seven years later, her husband, Helm, was appointed assistant librarian.

In April 1964, thirty years after the Franklin Institute accepted the Library of Amateur Journalism and had promised to “house it permanently,” Mrs. Spink received a letter requesting removal of the library. At the convention in Des Moines the same year, “Edwin Harler, Harold Segal and the librarian were appointed to meet with the institute.” Due to Spink’s ill health, he and Mrs. Spink resigned their duties and Stan Oliner, a professional librarian, took over the duties.

The Franklin Institute gave those involved ample time to decide upon a recipient. Oliner thought that everything should be sorted and re-catalogued before being sent to a new home.

Because it bad so often been referred to as the Fossil Library, and historic information in The Fossil led them so to believe, the NAPA felt that the Fossils should make the decision on the library’s disposal. The Fossils permitted Oliner to do as he requested. To pay the trucking charges to Oliner at Grand Junction, Colorado, the NAPA donated $ 100 and the Fossils $7.

On September 30, 1967, the Library of Amateur Journalism was formally transferred to the New York University Library, Special Collections division, in New York City. The papers were signed by delegates of the Fossils, NAPA and the American Amateur Press Association, whose journals have been added to the total. However, lack of funds have hampered sorting, indexing and filing.

At Chicago in 1934 the impulsive, energetic and aggressive Ralph W. Babcock, Jr., of Great Neck, N. Y., editor of the Scarlet Cockerel, was elected to the presidency. It was printed by the editor and some of its later issues were among the finest examples of printing ever produced by an amateur journalist. His administration, a tempestuous one, was filled with minor excitement. Elected to the highest office in the association without experience in the minor offices, he broke all precedents. Impatient of results, he paid very little attention to personal feelings or constitutional law. Disagreements with his fellow officers, demands for resignations, heated arguments were common. He assumed the office of mailing manager, he removed the secretary and combined the office with that of treasurer.

He himself at one time resigned, then withdrew his resignation. The official editor was continually in hot water with the president and offered his resignation, but it was not accepted. At one time President Babcock announced he was a candidate for re-election, and at another that he would never accept another office in the association. Finally, he became a candidate for official editor.

Presidents’ Field, a six-acre plot on the grounds of George W. Macauley, publisher of 0-Wash-Ta-Nong near Grand Rapids, Michigan, was dedicated in 1936. The pine trees were arranged to form the letters NAPA and each was marked with the name of the president whom it honored. Willard 0. Wylie, the oldest living ex-president at that time (elected in 1883), made the dedication speech, bringing tears to many by his tributes, uttered in the reverent stillness, broken only by an occasional rustle of a gentle summer wind.

Starting in 1914, at the age of 62, Charles W. Smith decided to give his poor eyesight a tryout. At the urging of Howard P. Lovecraft, he published the first issue of Tryout . It ran the course of almost 300 issues until Smith’s death in 1948.

Smith first learned of printing as a hobby eight years before the present NAPA was born, but it was not until many years later that he learned of its existence. Before his affiliation with the organized hobby, he and his brother published a series of assorted titles on a 13xl9 Cottage press.

He left school at 13 to work as a stock clerk, later in a box factory which he eventually owned. He retired because of poor health in 1903, lived with his daughter where he fashioned a printshop in a cellar behind a coal bin, unheated in harsh New England winters and subject to flooding during thaws.

In 1912 he moved to Haverhill, Mass., where he luxuriated in a 10×12 den, walls covered with stamps, pictures, postcards and material that Lovecraft called “delightful accumulations.” Few amateurs ever met him. Because of deafness he never attended NAPA conventions, but expressed lively interest in elections and association affairs. In later years, type and press were moved to his bedroom.Younger members were often critical of Tryout’s numerous typographical errors, but his deference was characteristic, “Sometimes I fear the word care is not in my vocabulary and that inattentiveness and indifference have marked me for their own. Tryout will continue to be printed and bound in the same old way.” The same way meant typos unseen by deteriorating eyesight, the use of newsprint stock and wallpaper covers, side stapled.

During the lean years, Tryout was the trusty “old reliable, ” printing a multitudinous number of poems, short articles and miscellany tinged with comment. It must have been exasperating to a careful writer to see his masterpiece with a glaring error, but all were not aware of the condition of Smith’s sight and his advanced age.

The C. W. part of his name was gradually and affectionately replaced with Tryout in unitalicized mode, and so he was addressed until his last days in 1948.

During World War II NAPA’s active printers were scattered throughout the world. Fortunately, older members came from the shadows of inactivity to carry on. Timothy B. Thrift, revered for his legendary Lucky Dog, and Ernest A. Edkins, one of the hobby’s greatest critics, teamed to co-edit The Aonian, a title carefully selected from more than fifty possibilities.

Thrift and Edkins embarked on what was to be a five-year project of great pieces from amateur journals of yesteryears, together with the best of current writing and comment. Edkins’ pen never flowed more fluently while Thrift handset seventeen galleys of type for each 24-page issue. The quarterly appeared regularly until Edkins became ill. Thrift declared “30” to the enterprise in 1945 after twelve issues.

While the Thrift-Edkins “symposium” reprinted famous pieces of the “halcyon days,” it also featured personality sketches on Burton Crane, Edward H. Cole, Warren J. Brodie, Paul W. Cook and Edwin B. Hill. Thrift allowed Edkins the bulk of their editorial space and he played it to the hilt. Reviews were scholarly, thorough and never without wit. They were written with the talent and skill of a craftsman and Thrift presented them with the dignity and finesse of a master printer. Never in the National’s history was there ever a more perfect wedding of talent.

The arrival of an issue of The Aonian must have been a compelling hour or more of required reading. Behind the Ionic columns on the cover, bordering the “abode of the Muses,” were double-columned 6×9 pages, beautiful to behold in monotype Janson.

On March 2, 1962, the National Amateur Press Association lost a bit of its luster, as it always does when one of its “greats” depart. This day it was Vondy, the “queen of amateur journalism.” From 1912, her first year in the hobby, she replaced a vice-president—she was the willing replacement for any dropout since then. She held practically every job except that of president, one that she persistently refused many times for private reasons.

She was a poet of exceptional talent, a witty and clever manipulator of precise adjectives and adverbs, an historian of amateur doings, a story teller whose humor included her own misadventures, and the one person who could best describe what holds us together in the hobby. She authored a book of poems, and won many laureates in various divisions.

Born Edna von der Heide, changed to Hyde during World War I, then to McDonald upon marriage, the shortened “Vondy” lived all those years. She was associated with many journals and a frequent contributor to others. She edited Bellette, and previously co-edited The Wag with Helm Spink.

She engineered the NAPA Life Members Fund, which today buttresses the association’s treasury against future storms. Vondy gifted memberships to overseas amateurs during World War II financial restrictions and then donated life memberships to Arthur Harris in Wales, Leon Stone and James Guinane in Australia, and Robert Barr in New Zealand. In 1958 the Fossils presented her with the first-ever award of their Gold Composing Stick in “recognition of untold years of friendship and service in amateur journalism.”

Tributes and flowers come too late for many, but fortunately, in April 1956, Lee Hawes, of Tampa, Florida, dedicated a 48-page issue of Gator Growl to Vondy. It celebrated her 50th anniversary in the hobby and contained a typical four-star collaboration by L. Verle Heljeson and Thomas B. Whitbread, “The Planet Vondy,” another by the talented James Guinane and reprints of some of her special poems and articles.

Amateur press clubs have always been a part of the hobby. They existed in urban centers before the formation of a national association. They have been instrumental in keeping participation and interest at high levels.

Before the 1930’s they were mostly literary and social gatherings. The Blue Pencil Club thrived for years before moving from Brooklyn to the expanding metropolitan New York-New Jersey suburbs. San Francisco around 1900 was an active literary center; among its members was a promising young writer: Jack London.

Cleveland had a number of active clubs in its time, usually literary groups, but was also noted-as a publishing hub. Famous names: Anthony Moitoret, William Dowdell, Warren J. Brodie, Harry Martin, Irving “Mac” SinClair, Tim Thrift, Sam Loveman.

However, it took the Amateur Printers Club to stir enthusiasm after the NAPA doldrums of the late 1920’s. Vincent Haggerty started the APC as a group to discuss amateur journalism and hobby printing. In 1933 this club initiated the idea of a convention daily with the appearance of the APC News. But it wasn’t until Burton Crane became involved that the meetings became active group participation printing sessions. Weekend meetings, originally in the New York area, spread from Boston to Washington. At the great 1941 Cleveland convention the attending APC printers (Crane, Harold Segal and Sheldon Wesson) wrote, linotyped and printed The Moving Finger, possibly the most substantial convention paper ever undertaken.

In 1951, the first year of its second reincarnation, APC members produced 85 amateur journals.

With the passing of Haggerty and Crane, the torch was passed to Segal, the Wessons, the Victor Moitorets, William Haywoods and Alfred and Ralph Babcock, with Al Fick, George Trainer, Rolfe Castleman joining the active ranks and Edna Hyde McDonald, Albert Lee, Roy Lindberg, L. Verle Heljeson and Thomas B. Whitbread among those attracted to the spinning circle.

The decline of the APC in the 1970’s is noticed. Some APC gatherings have been miniature NAPA conventions. Attendance, often in the twenties, has at times gone over thirty. Some key members have moved from the area, others do not have the space to accommodate a meeting. Recently gatherings have been held on New Year’s eve at the home of Harold Segal and in the summer at the Haywoods.

New active groups have developed in the area of metropolitan Washington, D. C., where members meet twice yearly to print VAPA Trails. The Suncoast club in the Tampa-St. Petersburg section prints Only on Sunday during its periodic get-togethers. In Denver the group has literary sessions and selects an editor for each issue of the Columbine Amateur Press Club’s Colorado Roundup. Denvaria is another journal that printer Columbines produce on occasion. Southern Californians gather socially, print segments of NAPA West at their own shops; and stirred up enthusiasm to sponsor a San Diego convention in 1974.

Recent innovations are journals produced when two or more amateurs are rubbed together. More a memento of the visit than a lasting piece of literature, some of the spark of the occasion often glimmers in the four pages. Prominent in this category, Victor and Rowena Moitoret’s Trophee des Alpes and Entrada, Willametta and Martin Keffer’s Visiting Firemen, the Segal-Fick Shampane and certain issues of Ralph Babcock’s Weaker Moments. While none ever set new literary or typographic pinnacles, they encourage activity and renew lagging interest.

The first Philadelphia amateur press club was formed in 1872 with G. Heidel Louden as president. Its life was short. In 1876 another club was formed for the purpose of founding the present NAPA. Its story is told earlier in this book. Later that year a Quaker Amateur Press Association was organized locally and in 1877 a rival Keystone APA was started with moderate success. Both were reorganized in 1881 and Frank Vondersmith was elected president of the Keystone group and was succeeded by James M. Beck. There was another reorganization in 1882 with John W. McLain as president and Sam Stinson as editor. These clubs had short lives.

A new Philadelphia Amateur journalists group was formed in 1885 with Harry Hochstadter as the president. He was succeeded by Porter F. Cope and Walter C. Chiles. This club disbanded in 1891.

In 1897 the Quaker City APA was again formed with monthly meetings, but the Spanish-American War took away its active members. It reorganized again in 1898 and continued for many years. On its fifth anniversary. J. Ray Spink was named president. At the end of seven years it reported having held 131 meetings. Charles H. Russell was then president and Will Murphy secretary.

G. Heidel Louden was one of the pioneers of amateur journalism in Philadelphia, although there is no record of his attendance at the founding of the NAPA. He began publishing the Philadelphia Monthly in 1870, the same year W. H. Waters started The Boys’ Gazette. During the ensuing decade Philadelphia was the home of many amateur journals. George Bertron issued Boys’ Gem and Evan Reed Riale, prominent in the National’s formation, published Our Effort and later the Censor. Vondersmith issued The Pearl and the Acme.

Other Philadelphia amateur journals during the legendary year of 1876 were: Sphinx by James M. Beck; Keystone Gazette, Philip Hano; Dispatch, later called The Tidal Wave, Lavernus S. Kerr; Dot and Philadelphia Banner, William J. Eldridge; The Literary World and Crisis, J. C. Worthington; Golden Leaves, Charles T. Semper; and, Our Mutual Friend, R. Howard Taylor.