Once, when Colley was ill of a fever, Mist made up his journalistic mind that his enemy must have the good taste to depart the pleasures of this life.

So he inserted the following paragraph in his paper: "Yesterday died Mr.Colley Cibber, late Comedian of the Theatre Royal, notorious for writing the 'Non-juror.'" The very day that this obituary appeared Cibber crawled out of the house, sick-faced but convalescent, and read the notice with keen interest.

Whether he was amused thereat, or dubbed the joke a poor one, is a matter which he does not record, but he tells us that he "saw no use in being thought to be thoroughly dead before his time," and "therefore had a mind to see whether the town cared to have him alive again." "So the play of the 'Orphan' being to be acted that day, I quietly stole myself into the part of the Chaplain, which I had not been seen in for many years before.

The surprise of the audience at my unexpected appearance on the very day I had been dead in the news, and the paleness of my looks, seem'd to make it a doubt whether I was not the ghost of my real self departed.

But when I spoke, their wonder eas'd itself by an applause; which convinc'd me they were then satisfied that my friend Mist had told a fib of me.