In 1897 _Punch_ illustrated the change by parallel pictures of the journalist in 1837, writing in a squalid room in the Fleet Prison, and in the year of the Diamond Jubilee, seated in a sumptuously equipped office, fat and prosperous, and smoking a large cigar. In the previous year _Punch_ had saluted the _Daily News_ on the attainment of its jubilee. The connexion was an old and intimate one, for the publishers of _Punch_ had been the first publishers of the _Daily News_, and it had been renewed in the 'nineties when Sir Henry Lucy ("Toby," of _Punch_) for a while occupied the chair in which Dickens had sat. A far more momentous event, however, was associated with the year 1896--the founding of the _Daily Mail_ by Mr. Alfred Harmsworth, subsequently described by one of _Punch's_ writers as "the arch-tarantulator of our times." He was certainly, if unintentionally, invaluable to _Punch_, and even more stimulating than Mr. Caine and Miss Corelli. By 1900 his genius for discovering a constant succession of scapegoats, and converting the idol of yesterday into the Aunt Sally of to-day, is handsomely acknowledged in the lines "Ad Aluredum Damnodignum." Then it was Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Mr. Balfour, but _Punch_ foresaw that the habit was inveterate:-- For still, oh hawk-eyed Harmsworth, you pursue With more than all the ardour of a lover, From find to check and so from check to view Your scapegoat-hunt from covert into covert. As for the test of circulation, _Punch_ betrays a certain scepticism in his remarks on "The People's Pulse" in 1903:-- The account given by the _Daily Mail_, in Saturday's issue, of its daily circulation for the last eight months, together with the leading event of each day, ought to be kept up from time to time as a Permanent People's Pulse Report. Nothing could be more instructive than to note, for instance, that while the Delhi Durbar only attracted 844,799 readers, the "Oyster Scare" allured as many as 846,501; while "Lord Dalmeny's Coming of Age" brought the figures up to 847,080, and the "Sardine Famine" accounted for a further increase of 14,586. Or, again, there is a world of significance in the fact that the relative attractions of the "Poet Laureate's Play" and "Mr. Seddon's Meat Shops" are represented by a balance of 5,291 in favour of the Napoleon of New Zealand. Life was certainly made livelier by the new methods introduced, with variations, from America, and _Punch_ feelingly contrasts the drab existence of those who lived before with that of those who lived under the Harmsworth _régime_:-- Drear was the lot, minus the _Mail_, Of soldier, sailor, ploughboy, tinker; And worse, whenever they grew pale, They had no pills to make them pinker.