The Story of the House of Cassell
Wallace formed a staff of university men, experts in their subjects, and from the beginning made the "Educator" quite sound in quality. Its weekly numbers correspond to a week's work at school or college, with progressive lessons in a variety of subjects, illustrated by drawings and diagrams where necessary. In the curriculum of the first volume there were ancient history, architecture, arithmetic, biography, botany, geography, geology, geometry, and so forth, down the gamut of the alphabet to zoology. There were lessons in Latin and in English; French, Spanish, and German were also taught. This list of subjects received additions in later issues of the work, which Cassell endeavoured always to keep abreast of the educational movement.
A section of "Miscellaneous Articles" need be mentioned only to recall one circumstance. A short essay with the sententious title, "The Influence of Morality or Immorality on the Countenance," was illustrated by an engraving taken from a French publication. It must be familiar to every Englishman of the last generation under the title of "The Child: What will he become?" Cassell, with his unfailing flair for a striking bit of réclame, had a huge poster version of the picture made and lavished it on hoardings and bare walls. It was the first breakaway from the common form of newspaper advertising, and the stir it made is not easy to realize now that every wall within sight of a human being blazes with a picture poster.
The public welcome given to the "Popular Educator" gratified everybody concerned in its production. Wallace expressed his feelings in his own delightfully formal way: "It cannot be but pleasing for us to reflect that each successive week nearly 100,000 families are undergoing a course of useful instruction by means of this periodical … and it is not only among the humbler classes that our work is read and appreciated, but many among the affluent welcome its appearance. As we were sitting in the House of Commons the other evening a
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