Finally the office of Gazetteer was abolished, and any man who wished might issue a "gazette," provided he kept within proper bounds. The result was a flight of small leaflet periodicals, quite like the Chapbook Renaissance of Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five and Eighteen Hundred Ninety-six, when over eleven hundred "brownie" and "chipmunk" magazines were started in America. Every man with two or three ideas and ten dollars' capital started a magazine. Steele, teeming with thoughts demanding expression, at war with smug society, and possessing wit withal, started the "Tatler," to be issued three times a week, price one penny. Seizing upon a creation of Swift's, "Isaac Bickerstaff," a character already known to the public, was introduced as editor. Bickerstaff announced his assistants, and among others named as authority in Foreign Affairs a waiter at Saint James Coffeehouse known as "Kidney." The spirit of rollicking freedom in the publication, with a touch of philosophy, and a dash of culture, caught the public fancy at once. The "Tatler" was the theme in every coffeehouse, and in the drawing-rooms, as well. Those who understood it laughed and passed it along to others who pretended they understood, and so it became the fad. Then the anonymity lent the charm of mystery—who could it be who was into all the secrets, and knew the world so thoroughly? Addison read each issue with surprise and amusement, but it was not until the fifth number that he located the author positively, by reading an observation of his own that he had voiced to Steele some weeks before. Steele absorbed everything, digested it, and gave the good out as his own, innocent and probably unmindful of where he got it. This accounts for his wonderful versatility: he made others grub and used the net result. Some years ago Francis Wilson made a mock complaint to the effect that whenever he met Eugene Field in the "Saints and Sinners Corner" for a half-hour's chat, any good thing he might voice was duly printed next day in the "Sharps and Flats" column as Field's very own, and thus did the genial Eugene acquire his reputation as a genius. All of which gentle gibing contains more fact than fiction.