READY RETORTS.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 54, 1 September 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

READY RETORTS.

There's no property in a bon mot, '' 'Twas mine, 'tis Lie, and has been slave to thmuands." The academic wit 8 get each other's sayings fathered on them, and it now seems there is a free barter among the joKes of politicians. A writer in the Canadian Magazine tells tlr's sfory of an Ontario political lawyer, Mr. Meredith : — " On the occasion of his first political contest he was addressing a public meeting on the night previous to polb'ng day, when a man in the crowd got off the then somewhat novel query, 'Does your mother know you're out?' There was, of course, a laugh; but the laugh was turned when Mr. Meredith replied, 'Yes.myfriend, and by this time to-morrow night she will know lam in.' " Another of Mr. Meredith's responses is thus narrated : — "A rough interrupted him with the gag, ' Get your hair cut !' Mr. Moredith fixed his eye on the interrupter. Recognising him as a man whom he, as a lawyer, had been instrumental in ' sending down ' to do a term, he quietly remarked, ' It seems to me I onco had something to do with getting your hair cut.' " The cynic, versed in the disillusions of history, will say that all retorts of this sort belong to the class of " things one would have said if one had thought of them soon enough" — what they call " after-wit " in the North. Somebody makes them up about himself, and then they get told about anybody else who seems appropriate.