‘Never mind, we’ve done it,’ replied Jack, adding, ’Puff’ll be as pleased as Punch.  We’ve polished him off uncommon.  That’s just the sort of account to tickle the beggar.  He’ll go riding about the country, showing it to everybody, and wondering who wrote it.’

‘And what shall we send it to?—­the Sporting Magazine, or what?’ asked Sponge.

‘Sporting Magazine!—­no,’ replied Jack; ’wouldn’t be out till next year—­quick’s the word in these railway times.  Send it to a newspaper—­Bell’s Life, or one of the Swillingford papers.  Either of them would be glad to put it in.’

‘I hope they’ll be able to read it,’ observed Sponge, looking at the blotched and scrawled manuscript.

‘Trust them for that,’ replied Jack, adding, ’If there’s any word that bothers them, they’ve nothing to do but look in the dictionary—­these folks all have dictionaries, wonderful fellows for spellin’.’

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 BLOOMER

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.  AEneas 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 Scotsman—­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-schoolmaster 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.’