"Pray," said Colonel Cleland, taking snuff and swinging himself to and
fro with an air of fashionable grace, "has any one seen the new paper?"

"What!" cried the gentleman in the flaxen wig, "what! the 'Tatler's'
successor,--the 'Spectator'?"

"The same," quoth the colonel.

"To be sure; who has not?" returned he of the flaxen ornament. "People
say Congreve writes it."

"They are very much mistaken, then," cried a little square man with
spectacles; "to my certain knowledge Swift is the author."

"Pooh!" said Cleland, imperiously, "pooh! it is neither the one nor the
other; I, gentlemen, am in the secret--but--you take me, eh? One must
not speak well of one's self; mum is the word."

"Then," asked Steele, quietly, "we are to suppose that you, Colonel, are
the writer?"

"I never said so, Dicky; but the women will have it that I am," and the
colonel smoothed down his cravat.

"Pray, Mr. Addison, what say you?" cried the gentleman in the flaxen
wig; "are you for Congreve, Swift, or Colonel Cleland?" This was
addressed to a gentleman of a grave but rather prepossessing mien; who,
with eyes fixed upon the ground, was very quietly and to all appearance
very inattentively solacing himself with a pipe; without lifting his