Truth will never be had where there are many poets, nor fair dealing where there are many lawyers; no, nor health where there are many physicians." At this moment, a little grey-headed hobgoblin, who had heard that a living man was arrived, flung himself at my feet, weeping abundantly. "Dear me," said I, "what are you?" "One who is grievously wronged every day in the world," said he. "May God move your soul to procure justice for me." "What is your name?" said I. "I am called _Somebody_," he replied, "and there is scarcely a piece of pimping, or a calumny, or a lie, or 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."