_Tony_. I do confess it.
Do you think I'd tell you truths!
FLETCHER'S WIFE FOR A MONTH.
[The following adventures were related to me by the same nervous
gentleman who told me the romantic tale of THE STOUT GENTLEMAN,
published in Bracebridge Hall.
It is very singular, that although I expressly stated that story to
have been told to me, and described the very person who told it, still
it has been received as an adventure that happened to myself. Now, I
protest I never met with any adventure of the kind. I should not have
grieved at this, had it not been intimated by the author of Waverley,
in an introduction to his romance of Peveril of the Peak, that he was
himself the Stout Gentleman alluded to. I have ever since been
importuned by letters and questions from gentlemen, and particularly
from ladies without number, touching what I had seen of the great
unknown.
Now, all this is extremely tantalizing. It is like being congratulated
on the high prize when one has drawn a blank; for I have just as great
a desire as any one of the public to penetrate the mystery of that
very singular personage, whose voice fills every corner of the world,
without any one being able to tell from whence it comes. He who keeps
up such a wonderful and whimsical incognito: whom nobody knows, and
yet whom every body thinks he can swear to.
My friend, the nervous gentleman, also, who is a man of very shy,
Retired habits, complains that he has been excessively annoyed in
consequence of its getting about in his neighborhood that he is the
fortunate personage.
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