tale, to set people at loggerheads, but must be
laid upon me. 'Verily,' says one, 'she is a prodigious fine girl, and
she was praising you before somebody, notwithstanding that some very
great person is paying his suit to her.' 'I heard somebody,' says
another, 'reckoning that this estate was mortgaged nine hundred pounds
deep.' 'I saw some one yesterday,' says the beggar, 'with a chequered
slop, like a sailor, who had come with a large ship load of corn, to the
neighbouring port.' And thus every ragged dog mangles me for his own
wicked purposes. Some call me Friend--'I was informed by a friend,' says
one, 'that so and so has no intention of leaving a farthing to his wife,
and that there is no affection between them.' Some others vilify me yet
more, and call me Bird--'A bird whistled in my ear, that there are bad
practices going on there,' say they. It is true, some call me by the
more respectable name of Old Person; yet, not half the omens, prophecies,
and counsels, which are attributed to the Old Person, belong to me. I
have never bidden people to follow the old road, provided the new one be
better, nor a hundred similar things. But Somebody is my common name,"
he continued, "him you will most frequently hear, to have been concerned
in every atrocious matter. Because, ask a person wherever a vile,
slanderous falsehood has been uttered, who it was who said it, and he
will reply, 'Truly I don't know who, but somebody in the company said
it;' question then every one in the company concerning the fable, and
every one will say he heard it from somebody, but no one knows from whom.
Is not this a shameful injury?" he demanded. "Be so good as to inform
every one whom you may hear naming me, that I have never said any one of
these things, nor have ever invented nor uttered a lie to slander any
one, nor a story to set relations by the ears; that I do not go near
them; that I know nothing of their history, nor of their affairs, nor of
their accursed secrets; and that they ought not to fling their wickedness
upon me, but on their own corrupt brains."

At this moment there came a little death, one of the secretaries of the
king, desiring to know my name, and commanding master Sleep, to carry me
instantly before the king. I was compelled to go, though utterly against
my will, by the power, which, like a whirlwind carried me away, betwixt
high and low, thousands of miles back to the left hand, until we came
again in sight