ould not
explain it. Mr Myson tried to rouse the public by passionately stirring
up extremely urgent matters--such as the smoke nuisance, the increase of
the rates, the park question, German competition, technical education
for apprentices; but the public obstinately would not be roused
concerning its highest welfare to the point of insisting on a regular
supply of the _Daily_. If a mere five thousand souls had positively
demanded daily a copy of the _Daily_ and not slept till boys or
agents had responded to their wish, the troubles of the _Daily_
would soon have vanished. But this ridiculous public did not seem to
care which paper was put into its hand in exchange for its halfpenny, so
long as the sporting news was put there. It simply was indifferent. It
failed to see the importance to such an immense district of having two
flourishing and mutually-opposing daily organs. The fundamental boy
difficulty remained ever present.

And it was the boy difficulty that Denry perseveringly and ingeniously
attacked, until at length the _Daily_ did indeed possess some sort
of a brigade of its own, and the bullying and slaughter in the streets
(so amusing to the inhabitants) grew a little less one-sided.

A week or more before the _Signal's_ anniversary day, Denry heard
that the _Signal_ was secretly afraid lest the _Daily's_
brigade might accomplish the marring of its gorgeous procession, and
that the _Signal_ was ready to do anything to smash the
_Daily's_ brigade. He laughed; he said he did not mind. About that
time hostilities were rather acute; blood was warming, and both papers,
in the excitation of rivalry, had partially lost the sense of what was
due to the dignity of great organs. By chance a tremendous local
football match--Knype _v_: Bursley--fell on the very Saturday of
the procession. The rival arrangements for the reporting of the match
were as tremendous as the match itself, and somehow the match seemed to
add keenness to the journalistic struggle, especially as the
_Daily_ favoured Bursley and the _Signal_ was therefore forced
to favour Knype.

By all the laws of hazard there ought to have been a hitch on that
historic Saturday. Telephone or telegraph ought to have broken down, or
rain ought to have made play impossible, but no hitch occurred. And at
five-thirty o'clock of a glorious afternoon in earliest November the
_Daily_ went to press with a truly brilliant account of the manner
in which Bursley (for the fi