The Mystery of M. Felix

OSPECT, IN WHICH SOME VERY TALL AND VERY FINE W

Mystery was, to the general mass of readers, as wholesome as it was entertaining. Judging by results, these latter critics were most certainly in the right. The public read with eager avidity the details of that remarkable case as we published them, in our own original fashion, from day to day. The demand for copies of our several editions was so great that we were absolutely unable to satisfy it, and we are afraid that thousands of newspaper readers were compelled to pay exorbitant prices to the ragamuffins who vend the daily journals in the public streets. We made strong endeavors to put a stop to this extortion, but our efforts were vain, chiefly because the people themselves were content to pay three and four times the established price of the Evening Moon rather than be deprived of the pleasure of reading the tempting morsels with which its columns were filled. Letters of congratulation poured in upon us from all quarters, written by persons occupying the highest positions in society, as well as by others moving in the lowest stations, and from that time the success of the Evening Moon, as a journal which had firmly fixed itself in the affections of the people, was assured. If any excuse is needed for the system of journ

lies in the extraordinary intelligence of our staff. Our writers are picked men, who could earn celebrity in other channels than those of newspaper columns, but who are content to serve us because they are paid as capable journalists ought to be paid, with a liberality which other newspaper proprietors would deem excessive, but which we do not. This is one of the secrets of our astonishing and unprecedented success. Our editors, sub-editors, special correspondents, and reporters are zealous as no others are because they are devoted to our cause, because they have regular and tangible proof that our welfare is theirs, because they share in the profits of our enterprise. Thus it is that we are now in possession of particulars relating to 'T

our efforts, is now utterly exploded. It has been found and proved that the truest regions of romance lie in humble courts and alleys, where the commonest flowers grow, where the air is not perfumed by odorous blossoms, where people dwell not in turreted castle or stately palace, but in the humblest homes and narrowest spaces, where common fustian and dimity, not glittering armor and silken sheen, are the ordinary wear; where faces are thin and anxious from the daily cares of toil, where the battle is not for vast tracts of country worth millions, but for the daily loaf of bread worth fourpence halfpenny. It has been found and proved that the police courts are a veritable hot-bed in which romance is forever springing up. When we contemplate the shattering of old false idols a

p to the police court on the suspicion of being in some undiscovered way connected with a crime with which all England was ringing. He was remanded day after day for the production of evidence which was never forthcoming, and day after day we protested against the injustice of which it was sought to make him a victim. The slender threads in our possession we held fast, as we have said, until at length we were rewarded with a gratifying success, until at length we brought the guilt home to the guilty parties. We ourselves were misled by the specious statements of one of the miscreants, a woman, we regret to say, who was one of the tw