Year: 1871

THE world is full of people who are
perpetually snatching at occasions for in
forming the one with whom they last talk
that they always thought So" No Sab
bath School Superintendent can become a
bank defaulter; no clergyman turn out to
be reprobate of uncomfortable crimes
no public officer proved to have accepted
uribes, without the chattering of a swarm
of gossips, who swear that they suspected
the thing from the first. No enormity
surprises them; for their malignant ON
nisciepce protects them against surprise.
The intuitions of the scandal monger are
wonderful intellectual phenomenon. He
is sort of malignant moral surgeon, who,
Indifferent to the agony he causes, probes
the wound in order to extract the bullet
not of truth, but of Misrepresentation.


No doubt it is rare gift to know, by in
tuition, that certain man is villain, yet
utter no word against him until he is
proved to be SO. The gift is so rare that
we would not like to run the risk of being
unjust to humanity by calculating the sell
domness with which it is vouchsafed. But
human nature would assuredly manifest
itself in much more noble light, if men
and women, when any act of villainy per-
petrated by man of hitherto good repu-
Iation becomes public, would refrain from
telling each other, with significant winks
and mods, that they always thought so"
of the perpetrator, and that Mr.. Strange
ways, or Mr.. Deadly Darke, or whatever
his name may be, was never any better
than he ought to be. Detraction of this
kind is generally spoken without the
slightest reference to the many counter
balancing good points in the character of
the accused. 1t is verbally striking man
when he is down, helping to kick him to
l. Ill. L.


Rouchefoucald's celebrated maxim
might, with justice, be so modified as to
read, "In the suddenly discovered crimes
of men of hitherto spotless reputation,
there is something which is not unpleasant
to u.s." 1t is actually so. The majority of
us do not lose our appetites because Ba-
con accepts bribe and Marlborough does
not refuse one. We are apt to carelessly
inspect our previous opinions of the man,
and to fancy we detect among them very
shrewd suspicion of latent duplicity. The
I-always-thought-so" theory is generally
ready to spread its wings and fiutter on its
plausible way. Perhaps we take a secret
satisfaction in feeling that the crimes or
the vices to which we have often felt
vehemently impelled have actually been
committed by q man whom, in spite of
them, we cannot help confessing in our
secret hearts to be our moral and intel
lectual superior. We feel elated that our
weakness should have been not only
shared, but even yielded to, by character
nobler than our own. And yet even the
pleasure of gratified vanity like this does
cot console us sufficiently to lead US to
set charity as sentinel at our lips, to keep
the purely malignant suspicion from PAS
sing deity through.


People who, when man of good repu.
tation commits crime, habitually exclaim
that that is just what they expected, and
exactly what ought to have been antici.
pated by all who knew him, at least place
themselves in undesirable strait There
are circumstances when to make our sus.
picions known not only ceasef to be scan
dalous, but even rises into virtue, and he
who, on good grounds, cherishes u convic
ton pointing to mans criminality may
very readily be imagined capable of bsing
placed in circumstances where to reveal


his suspicious becomes imperatively hi:
duty. Into the dilemma of having enter


tanned the conviction which he professe:
to have cherished, the person who habitu


ally boasts that he "always thought so,
must often run the risk of thrusting


himself. When a man whom we believe


to be good turns out to be exceptionally


bad, we ought to be able to think only


with tenderness over the beauty of ou


past belief in his integrity. Not even hi


baseness can rob US of the generous sweet


ness of the faith we once placed in him


not even our own selfshnesss ought to b,


able to persuade us that we were foolish


in laying ourselves open to his decep


tions-Nei1 York Standard.