The _Northern Daily Express_ was a penny newspaper which laid claim to be the first provincial daily published at that price. The claim has, I believe, been disputed by Mr. Justin McCarthy, who claims the honour for a Liverpool journal with which he was himself at one time connected. But whether first or second, it is certain that the _Express_ was very early in the field. It had been started at Darlington in 1855 by a gentleman named Watson. A year later it was transferred to Newcastle, and it was in the _Express_ office that I first became acquainted with actual newspaper work. A very curious place was that office when I first knew it. It consisted simply of two rooms and two cellars in a house in West Clayton Street. One of the rooms was devoted to the compositors who set the little sheet; the other was by day the counting-house and the place where the papers were sold and advertisements received, whilst at night it became the editorial office--the editor, sub-editor, and reporters all working together here at the desks occupied by the clerks during the day. I ought, perhaps, to explain that the staff was not quite so large as my description of it might lead people to suppose. The sub-editor, for instance, doubled his part and acted as reporter also. Still, it was a tight fit in that little room in West Clayton Street when I went there of an evening to write some paragraph or letter for the next morning's paper. In the cellars was the machine on which the _Express_ was printed, and the stock of paper. In one respect, the _Express_ was better equipped than is many a pretentious journal of to-day. Its editor--Manson by name--was a man of remarkable ability, and his carefully-prepared leading articles were certainly second to none in the newspaper press of his day. This is a strong saying, but my reader will not think it unjustified when he hears that Manson's services had been eagerly sought for by more than one London newspaper, including the _Times_. He was a man of real genius, but, unfortunately, not without the defects of his qualities. In my young eyes he was a marvel, and almost an idol. To sit beside him, as I sometimes did, whilst he forged the thunderbolts which produced so great an effect upon the opinion of the town, was to me a joy almost too great for words. I would sit and watch the untiring hand moving across the slips of blue paper with a mind filled with the awe and reverence with which a pupil of Michael Angelo might have watched the master at work. I had at last got my foot on the first rung of the ladder, and my soul was filled with absolute content. True, my days were given to the W.B. Lead Office; but seldom did an evening come round without finding me, on one pretext or another, in the house in West Clayton Street. Indeed, I had now become almost a recognised member of the staff, and my little contributions in the shape of paragraphs, letters, and the inevitable verses appeared almost daily.