'
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.
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