me to attend to it. But I never lost
sight of the idea, and ever and anon the word 'tit-bits' would come to
me with the force of a warning dream. I worked continually at the idea
in my mind, and all my leisure thoughts were given up to it. In fact, I
was constantly afraid--so convinced was I that the idea was a good
one--that someone would bring it out before I could do so, and every
Saturday morning, the usual day for new weekly papers, I used to look
almost with painful anxiety to see whether there was a placard
announcing that such a paper had appeared. But, however, nothing of the
sort was brought out. The more I thought of it the more enamoured I
became of the idea, till, in October, 1881, the first number appeared."
And as he spoke Mr. Newnes handed me the very first number of the now
celebrated paper. "As soon as it was fairly started," continued my host,
"I gave up my other business and devoted myself to the editing and
publishing of the paper. At first, the chief pieces in it were selected
from books and periodicals--any sources, in short, that were not
copyright. I would get an anecdote from one book, and something else
from another, anything interesting, in fact, from wherever I could pick
it up; of course, now we have a large list of original contributors, but
at first that was the way in which it was compiled. In the early days,
naturally enough, its circulation was confined chiefly to Manchester.
There it simply 'caught on' immediately, and sold like wildfire. Why,
the newspaper boys' brigade," continued Mr. Newnes, now fairly excited
at the memory of that eventful Saturday morning, "sold something like
5,000 copies in two hours of the first number in Manchester alone. They
came rushing back to the office, where I sat anxiously awaiting their
news, full of the wonderful result. _Tit-Bits_ was then, I felt certain,
an assured success, and the public used to write to me to tell me of its
popularity. I receive letters to this day, and especially from ministers
and clergymen, who write to say that they recommend it because of the
information it contains, and its instructive character, and, above all,
because of the purity of its contents. Yet there are some clergymen who
think there is some _double entendre_ in the title _Tit-Bits_, and from
its title that it is probably a paper they ought to speak against; and
often, solely on account of its title, I believe they bracket it with
all kinds of other literature of