“I’m more than pleased to hear it,” said Labby; “for my father has been dead these ten years, and until the present moment I never knew where he had got to!” Between Labouchere on _Truth_ and Yates on the _World_ there commenced a species of “snacking” or sparring which promised from time to time a rush into active and bitter hostilities. The paragraphs of one paper bristled with allusions to the slips of “Edmund,” and the other paper retorted racily on “Henry,” and we all looked out eagerly for an outbreak of real hostility; but it never came. The doughty champions both feared and respected each other, and they expended any gall which they may have secreted during their meditations on other victims. The papers still adhere pretty nearly to the lines laid down by their founders, though lacking the personal supervision of those distinguished editors. Yates died suddenly—tragically—on leaving the stalls of a theatre, and Labouchere, abandoning both the senate and the editorial seat, retired to Florence, where he recently died. The memoirs of “Labby” should be a stimulating and piquant collection. The complete success of the three papers about which I have been writing naturally provoked a considerable amount of the sincerest form of flattery, and imitators sprang up like mushrooms, willing to share the rewards apparently reserved for those who catered for Society. These misguided adventurers discovered too late that even a Society editor must have his aptitudes—his special qualifications. Some of the new candidates for popular favour died the death. Others of them—dumb witnesses to that hope that “springs eternal in the human breast”—never in their lives arrived at paying-point, yet exist to this day. They pass from proprietor to proprietor. No one ever hears at what price they change hands. No one ever sees a copy sold on a stall. There is no trace of their existence in the clubs. Now and then one comes upon a back number in the coffee-room of an hotel. They are the pathetic derelicts of the Press—the pariahs of journalism. They persist by reason of their absolute badness. Their persistence recalls the inference set forth in the lines of Henry S. Leigh’s verses about Uncle John: “If Uncle John goes living on, How wicked Uncle John must be!” It is amusing to note how proprietors, editors, and contributors, will differ as to the motive power which has given the first substantial rise in circulation. Voules always held—he has told me so a dozen times—that the success of _Truth_ was brought about by the fashion articles of “Madge.” And Lucy of the _World_ became possessed by the belief that the popularity of the Yates venture was partly due to the appearance therein of his articles from the gallery of the House of Commons. He determined to establish a paper on the lines laid down by Yates. And his leading article was to be his own series, entitled “Under the Clock, by One of the Hands.”