[TIT FOR TAT.]
So long as men are what they are, those who can hit will give blow for blow, literally or metaphorically as the case may be, and standers-by will delight in the passage-at-arms.
Certainly it is pleasant to hear a sayer of ill-natured things put down by an intended victim of his cynical tongue. 'The great assembly,' as Manningham terms it, must have greatly enjoyed the discomfiture of a certain Lord Paget, who, oblivious of his own mean origin, thought to extol his superiority by asking Sir Thomas White what he thought of the quality of the cloak he wore. 'Truly,' replied the worthy alderman, 'it seems to be a very good cloth; but I remember when I was a young beginner, selling your lordship's father a far better, to make him a gown when he was sergeant to the Lord Mayor; and he was a very honest sergeant.'
Nor did those behind the scenes at a certain theatre fail to appreciate the situation when a prosperous equestrian's daughter observed to a retired actress: 'After all, you were only a circus artist; my father recollects you well;' and the elder lady retorted: 'I daresay he does, my dear; he used to chalk my shoes.'
When Lincoln and Douglas stumped Illinois as rival candidates, the latter in one of his speeches declared he remembered his opponent when he served liquor behind a bar. 'That's so,' said Lincoln; 'but the judge has forgotten to mention that while I was serving the liquor on one side of the bar, he was drinking it on the other.' A mild bit of retaliation compared with that inflicted by Brougham upon his fellow-actor Burton. In reply to the first-named asking if he had read the last number of the Lantern, a comic paper in which Brougham was personally interested, Burton said he never read the thing unless he was tipsy; a compliment his questioner acknowledged with a bow and, 'Then, Mr Burton, I am sure of one constant reader!'
It is well not to shew contempt for a book to its author's face, as newly made Sergeant Murphy learned when dining in company with the author of Ten Thousand a Year. He called out across the table: 'Warren, I never had patience to finish that book of yours; tell me what was the end of Gammon?' 'Oh,' said Warren to the lawyer, 'they made him a sergeant, and he was never heard of after.'
Charles Dickens turning over the leaves of a literary lady's album, came upon a page bearing the autographs of Daniel O'Connell and Joseph Bonaparte, and over against them read, in Southey's handwriting:
Birds of a feather flock together;
But vide the opposite page;
And thence you may gather,
I'm not of a feather
With some of the birds in this cage.
Underneath the Laureate's lines the novelist wrote:
Now if I don't make
The completest mistake
That ever put man in a rage,
This bird of two weathers
Has moulted his feathers,
And left them in some other cage—