mr. sponge's SPORTING TOUR. 249 



Just then a little buttony page, in green and gold, came in to ask 

 if there were any letters for the post ; and our friends hastily made 

 up their packet, directing it to the editor of the Swillingford " Guide 

 to Glory and Freeman's Friend ; " words that in the hurried style 

 of Mr. Sponge's penmanship looked very like " Guide to Grog, and 

 Freeman's Friend." 



CHAPTER XL. 



a literary eloomer. 



Time was when the independent borough of Swillingford supported 

 two newspapers, or rather two editors, the editor of the Swillingford 

 Patriot, and the editor of the Swillingford Guide to Glory ; but 

 those were stirring days, when politics ran high, and votes and corn 

 commanded good prices. The papers were never very prosperous 

 concerns, as may be supposed when we say that the circulation of 

 the former at its best time was barely seven hundred, while that of 

 the latter never exceeded a thousand. 



They were both started at the reform times, when the reduction 

 of the stamp-duty brought so many aspiring candidates for literary 

 fame into the field, and for a time they were conducted with all the 

 bitter hostility that a contracted neighbourhood, and a constant 

 crossing by the editors of each other's path, could engender. The 

 competition, too, for advertisements, was keen, and the editors were 

 continually taunting each other with taking them for the duty alone. 

 iEneas M'Quirter was the editor of the Patriot, and Felix Grimes 

 that of the Guide to Glory. 



M'Quirter, we need hardly say, was a Scotchman — a big, broad- 

 shouldered Sawney — formidable in "slacks," as he called his trousers, 

 and terrific in kilts ; while Grimes was a native of Swillingford, an 

 ex-schoolmastcr and parish clerk, and now an auctioneer, a hatter, a 

 dyer and bleacher, a paper-hanger, to which the wits said when he 

 set up his paper, he added the trade of " stainer." 



At first the rival editors carried on a " war to the knife " sort 

 of contest with one another, each denouncing his adversary in terms 

 of the most unmeasured severity. In this they were warmly sup- 

 ported by a select knot of admirers, to whom they read their weekly 

 effusions at their respective " houses of call " the evening before 

 publication. Gradually the fire of bitterness began to pale, and the 

 excitement of friends to die out ; M'Quirter presently put forth a 

 signal of distress. To accommodate "a large and influential number 

 of its subscribers and patrons," lie determined to publish on a Tuesday 



