Tom Long was the puppet of a nonsense-book; but other chap-books, following Deloney, told the “true histories” of industrious fortune-makers who were not out of place in a commercial age; and the life of an eighteenth century pedlar was plain enough to pass for truth. An account (in a late Stirling tract)[6] of the “Flying Stationer”, Peter Duthie, shows that he took up his trade in 1729, when he was eight years old, and was upon the road for eighty years—a Georgian Autolycus, known for his quaint wit “in every city, town, village and hamlet in great Britain”. At some time, perhaps, he sold “lives” of his brethren Dougal Graham and John Cheap the Chapman, whose story was “moralised” by Hannah More.