"'Pall-Mall Gazette'—why 'Pall-Mall Gazette?'" asked Wagg.
"Because the editor was born at Dublin, the sub-editor at Cork, because the proprietor lives in Paternoster Row, and the paper is published in Catherine-street, Strand. Won't that reason suffice you, Wagg?" Shandon said; he was getting rather angry. "Every thing must have a name. My dog Ponto has got a name. You've got a name, and a name which you deserve, more or less, bedad. Why d'ye grudge the name to our paper?"
"By any other name it would smell as sweet," said Wagg.
"I'll have ye remember its name's not what-d'ye-call'em, Mr. Wagg," said Shandon. "You know its name well enough, and—and you know mine."
"And I know your address too," said Wagg, but this was spoken in an under-tone, and the good-natured Irishman was appeased almost in an instant after his ebullition of spleen, and asked Wagg to drink wine with him, in a friendly voice.
When the ladies retired from the table, the talk grew louder still; and presently Wenham, in a courtly speech, proposed that every body should drink to the health of the new Journal, eulogizing highly the talents, wit, and learning, of its editor, Captain Shandon. It was his maxim never to lose the support of a newspaper man, and in the course of that evening, he went round and saluted every literary gentleman present with a privy compliment specially addressed to him; informing this one how great an impression had been made in Downing-street by his last article, and telling that one how profoundly his good friend, the Duke of So and So, had been struck by the ability of the late numbers.
The evening came to a close, and in spite of all the precautions to the contrary, poor Shandon reeled in his walk, and went home to his new lodgings, with his faithful wife by his side, and the cabman on his box jeering at him. Wenham had a chariot of his own, which he put at Popjoy's seat; and the timid Miss Bunion seeing Mr. Wagg, who was her neighbor, about to depart, insisted upon a seat in his carriage, much to that gentleman's discomfiture.
Pen and Warrington walked home together in the moonlight. "And now," Warrington said, "that you have seen the men of letters, tell me, was I far wrong in saying that there are thousands of people in this town, who don't write books, who are, to the full, as clever and intellectual as people who do?"
Pen was forced to confess that the literary personages with whom he had become acquainted had not said much, in the course of the night's conversation, that was worthy to be remembered or quoted. In fact, not one word about literature had been said during the whole course of the night:—and it may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters, that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, perhaps, who read books, so little as literary men.