With the opportunity of comparison afforded to its readers one would say this would be impossible, but as a matter of fact, the opportunity is not offered.  The readers of Penny Fiction do not read newspapers; political events do not interest them, nor even social events, unless they are of the class described in the Police News, which, I remark—­and the fact is not without significance—­does not need to add fiction to its varied attractions.

But who, it will be asked, are the public who don’t read newspapers, and whose mental calibre is such that they require to be told by a correspondence editor that ’any number over the two thousand will certainly be in the three thousand’?

I believe, though the vendors of the commodity in question profess to be unable to give any information on the matter, that the majority are female domestic servants.

As to what attracts them in their favourite literature, that is a much more knotty question.  My own theory is that, just as Mr. Tupper achieved his immense popularity by never going over the heads of his readers, and showing that poetry was, after all, not such a difficult thing to be understood, so the writers of Penny Fiction, in clothing very conventional thoughts in rather high-faluting English, have found the secret of success.  Each reader says to himself (or herself), ’That is my thought, which I would have myself expressed in those identical words, if I had only known how.

HOTELS.

The desire for cheap holidays—­as concerns going a long distance for little money—­is no doubt very general, but it is not universal.  It demands, like the bicycle, both youth and vigour.  In mature years, not only because we are more fastidious, but because we are less robust, the element of cheapness, though always agreeable, is subsidiary to that of comfort.  For my own part, if the chance were offered me to travel night and day for forty-eight hours anywhere—­though it was to the Elysian Fields—­and that in a Pullman car, and for nothing, I would rather go to Southend at my own expense from Saturday to Monday.  Suppose the former journey to be commenced by a Channel passage and continued in a third-class carriage, I would rather stop at home.  Or if, in addition to the other discomforts, I am to be a unit among 100 excursionists, with a coupon that insures my being lodged on the sixth floor everywhere, I had rather take a month’s quiet holiday in London at the House of Detention.

These things are matters of taste; but it is certain that a very large number of people, who, like myself, are neither rich nor in a position which justifies them in giving themselves airs, consider quiet, comfort, and the absence of petty cares the most essential conditions of a holiday.  These views necessitate some expense and generally limit the excursions of those who entertain them to their native land; but, on the other hand, they have their advantages.  They give one, for example, a great experience in the matter of hotels.