en whisper again, and then aloud, "But you know that person," then
whisper again. The thing would be well enough if Peter whispered to keep
the folly of what he says among friends; but, alas! he does it to
preserve the importance of his own thoughts. It is a wonderful thing
that, although he is never heard to talk about things in nature, and
never seen with a book in his hand, yet he can whisper something like
knowledge of what has and of what now passes in the world, which one
would think he learned from some familiar spirit that did not think him
worthy to receive the whole story. But the truth is, he deals only in
half accounts of what he would entertain you with. A help to his
discourse is, "That the town says, and people begin to talk very freely,
and he had it from persons too considerable to be named, what he will
tell you when things are riper." He informs you as a secret that he
designs in a very short time to reveal you a secret; you must say
nothing to any one. The next time you see him the secret is not yet
ripened, he wants to learn a little more of it, and in a fortnight's
time he hopes to tell you everything about it.

You may sometimes see Peter seat himself in a company of eight or ten
persons whom he never saw before in his life; and after having looked
about to see that no one overheard, he has communicated unto them in a
low voice, and under the seal of secrecy, the death of a great man in
the country, who was perhaps at that very moment travelling in Europe
for his pleasure. If upon entering a room you see a circle of heads
bending over a table, and lying close to one another, it is almost
certain that Peter Hush is among them. Peter has been known to publish
the whisper of the day by eight o'clock in the morning at one house, by
twelve at a second, and before two at a third. When Peter has thus
effectually launched a secret, it is amusing to hear people whispering
it to one another at second hand, and spreading it about as their own;
for it must be known that the great incentive to whispering is the
ambition which every one has of being thought in the secret and being
looked upon as a man who has access to greater people than one would
imagine.

Besides the character of Peter Hush, as a whisperer, there is Lady
Blast, about whom a word or two must be said. She deals in the private
transactions of the sewing circle, the quilting party, with all the
arcana of the fair sex. She has such a particular