“The _Daily News_!” ejaculated the agent, in perfect wonderment: “the _Express_!” he cried, in horrified amazement. “Excuse me, my dear friend--but are you mad? have you taken leave of your senses?” “I hope not,” responded Mr. Styles, in his usual calm, business-like manner. “What makes you think so?” “What makes me think so!” repeated the agent: “why, the idea that you should for an instant entertain the notion of advertising in those contemptible abortions! They are a perfect disgrace to newspaper literature, sir,” proceeded the agent, who was speaking conscientiously, and indeed truly. “Did you ever happen to read the _Daily News_?” “I have never seen the paper in my life,” answered Mr. Styles: “I had only heard of it.” “And you are not likely to see it,” returned the agent, “unless you go into the heart of Wapping or explore the back slums of Whitechapel. No respectable newsman keeps it: not that newsmen are more particular than other shop-keepers--but they only keep what they can sell, Mr. Styles. As for the _Express_, it is a regular cheat of an evening paper--made up entirely of the articles in the _Daily News_, without even having the bad grammar and the typographical errors corrected. But both prints are the most contemptible threepenny things I ever saw in my life; and one would be inclined to fancy that all the real newspaper talent had been absorbed by the pre-existing journals, leaving only the meanest literary scrubs in London to _do_ the _News_ and the _Express_.” “And yet I thought that the _News_ had been started under the auspices of Mr. Charles Dickens--the immortal _Boz_?” said Mr. Styles, interrogatively.