They had no sooner
placed themselves about the table, but they began to stare upon one
another, not being able to imagine what had brought them together.
Our English proverb says:
''Tis merry in the hall
When beards wag all.'
"It proved so in the assembly I am now speaking of, who seeing so
many peaks of faces agitated with eating, drinking and discourse,
and observing all the chins that were present meeting together very
often over the centre of the table, every one grew sensible of the
jest, and came into it with so much good humour that they lived in
strict friendship and alliance from that day forward."
In August, 1712, a tax of a halfpenny was placed upon newspapers, and
led to several leading journals being discontinued, a failure
facetiously termed "the fall of the leaf." "The Spectator" survived the
loss, but not unshaken, and the price was raised to twopence. It seems
strange that such an addition should affect a periodical of this
character, but a penny was a larger sum then than it is now. Steele
says, "the ingenious J. W. (Dr. Walker, Head-Master of the Charterhouse)
tells me that I have deprived him of the best part of his breakfast, for
that since the rise of my paper, he is forced every morning to drink his
dish of coffee by itself, without the addition of 'The Spectator,' that
used to be better than lace (_i.
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