This he did, and that gentleman's opinion was the same as his: to wit, that some wag was minded to play off a hoax upon him, and that the matter of the letter was all nothing but smoke.

The miserable voice, the spirit in pain, he could think of as the result of ventriloquism, or reverberation, oranything you please: an elaborate prolonged hoax, executed somehow by the tramp that had found a lodging in the old tower; but the juniper-bush staggered him.

It is not that Lord Byron is sometimes serious and sometimes trifling, sometimes profligate, and sometimes moralbut when he is most serious and most moral, he is only preparing to mortify the unsuspecting reader by putting a pitiful hoax upon him.

It was this which probably attracted Swift's attention and suggested his mischievous hoax.

He also wrote letters to The Daily Chronicle and Nature, but both those periodicals, suspecting a hoax, asked him to reconsider his action before they printed, and he was advised that such a strange story, unfortunately so bare of supporting evidence, might imperil his reputation as an investigator.

I suppose 'tis only a hoax by some rogue which will be brought out in time.

Secure in your coming forward at the last minute and confessing the hoax to save him, was there anything he might not have dared with impunity?"

I admired the very presumption of the theory, and finally told him to call the next day on my agent, Mr. Schenck, at such a number (Martin Baum's) in Maine Street, to whom, in the mean time, I transferred the hoax, and duly informing Schenck of the affair; and I do not recollect, at this time, how he shuffled him off.