A LITERARY BLOOMER Time was when the independent borough of Swillingford supported two newspapers, or rather two editors, the editor of the _Swillingford Patriot_, and the editor of the _Swillingford Guide to Glory_; but those were stirring days, when politics ran high and votes and corn commanded good prices.

The papers were never very prosperous concerns, as may be supposed when we say that the circulation of the former at its best time was barely seven hundred, while that of the latter never exceeded a thousand.
They were both started at the reform times, when the reduction of the stamp-duty brought so many aspiring candidates for literary fame into the field, and for a time they were conducted with all the bitter hostility that a contracted neighbourhood, and a constant crossing by the editors of each other's path, could engender.

The competition, too, for advertisements, was keen, and the editors were continually taunting each other with taking them for the duty alone.

AEneas M'Quirter was the editor of the _Patriot_, and Felix Grimes that of the _Guide to Glory_.
M'Quirter, we need hardly say, was a Scotsman--a big, broad-shouldered Sawney--formidable in 'slacks,' as he called his trousers, and terrific in kilts; while Grimes was a native of Swillingford, an ex-schoolmaster and parish clerk, and now an auctioneer, a hatter, a dyer and bleacher, a paper-hanger, to which the wits said when he set up his paper, he added the trade of 'stainer.' At first the rival editors carried on a 'war to the knife' sort of contest with one another, each denouncing his adversary in terms of the most unmeasured severity.

In this they were warmly supported by a select knot of admirers, to whom they read their weekly effusions at their respective 'houses of call' the evening before publication.