Lucy selected _Mayfair_ as the name of the venture on which he was about to embark. There should be no mistake about his _title_ to rank as a Society journalist. In that matter he could ruffle it with the best of them. He was, however, beset with difficulties from the beginning. In the first place—to his immense surprise and disgust—he found that Yates entirely declined to abandon his right in the heading of the Parliamentary articles, which continued to appear, from another “Hand,” until long after the death and burial of Lucy’s bantling. Lucy found certain members of the staff of _Mayfair_ intractable; the intractable aids declared that they found things impossible. And no one was greatly surprised when the new purveyor of social wares put the shutters up. Incidentally, Mr. Lucy’s paper was the means of enriching that harvest of English literature which is garnered by Mudie. It led to the publication of a couple of novels. In one of these works Mr. Lucy drew a character which was instantly recognized as a portrait of Mr. Christie Murray. Murray had been one of the intractables on the strength of the _Mayfair_. Christie was not only impatient of attack, but he was very well equipped for hitting back, which in due course he proceeded to do. Anyone interested in the literary amenities of the jocund days may find some diversion in referring to Christie Murray’s “The Way of the World.” Such merry jousts are inadmissible in these less strenuous times. A much longer period of existence was granted to the _St. Stephen’s Review_, founded by Mr. William Alison. In the editorial scheme, this organ was to play Parliamentary measures—so to speak—in addition to its piping for Society. Its political cartoons by Tom Merry did good service on more than one electoral campaign. Alison was a member of the Junior Carlton Club, so that it is needless to indicate the policy for which his paper stood. Alison had chosen for his sub-editor one of the strangest of the strange persons who crowd the journalistic mart. His name was William Tasker. He wrote vapid verses and slushy prose by the ream, over the name of “Edgar Lee.” But if his literary output was of a middling sort, his lying was first-rate. He had become so much the servant of the habit that he often believed his own stories. Alison never contradicted him, and so the faculty increased, and the facility acquired by the little professor became quite marvellous. He was an extremely ill-dressed man, and grew the mutton-chop face fungi for which Frank Richardson affects such a distaste. He always wore a red tie, and it was always a soiled one. A bland, propitiatory smile played about the corners of his mouth. He would rush up to one in the Strand with this sort of news: “I’ve just been to Downing Street, and Disraeli told me—this is quite private, mind you—that he’ll go to the country in June.” The reply might be: “Hang it all! I’ve just left the House of Commons.