“Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds,” he answered promptly. Many daily papers have been started on less than that sum, and a few of them have succeeded. But my experience of Fleet Street confirms the estimate of the eminent man whom I have quoted. It is not the mere start, of course, that demands that large capital sum; it is the income expended in keeping the thing going until it reaches the paying point that renders desirable a big capital. The best sub-edited paper that ever saw the light in London was _The Echo_. Its editing also was good. But for sub-editing it held, in its time, an easy pre-eminence. No one knows—no one ever will know—the amount of capital sunk in that venture successively by the publishers in La Belle Sauvage Yard, by Baron Grant, and by Passmore Edwards. Sanguine speculators succeeded each other in prolonging its existence. It was the very type and model of what an evening paper should be. It lived for many years. It never paid. It is one of the mysteries of the profession. A much shorter shrift was accorded by the public—that _difficile_ and insensate public!—to _The Hour_. This ambitious Tory organ was edited by Captain Hamber, who had held a corresponding post on the _Standard_. Hamber was one of the most remarkable men I ever met. He possessed some rather pronounced eccentricities; but he was a gentleman _ad unguem_, and he had the authentic editorial _flair_. But the faith of the proprietors of the _Hour_ could not have been equal to the proverbial grain of mustard-seed. For—at least, so Hamber more than once told me—they “shut down” on the very day on which, for the first time, the paper showed a profit. On the collapse of this Conservative venture the gallant Captain was offered the editorship of the _Morning Advertiser_. Thus he could—and did—boast of having controlled the destinies of three morning papers. He did not, however, very greatly relish his connection with the “_’Tiser_,” as it was irreverently called by the Street. But he did his work well and conscientiously, and succeeded in what should have seemed an impossible task—that, namely, of raising the tone and increasing the influence and circulation of the organ of the British Bung.