vius.[660] I need hardly say that I
considered the last letter to be one of those to which no answer is so good
as no answer.

These letters remind me in one respect of the correspondents of the
newspapers. My other party wrote because a friend had pointed me out: but
he would not have written if he had known what another friend told him just
in time for the second letter. The man who sends his complaint to the
newspaper very often says, in effect, "Don't imagine, Sir, that I read your
columns; but a friend who sometimes does has told me ..." It is worded
thus: "My attention {360} has been directed to an article in your paper of
..." Many thanks to my friend's friends for not mentioning the Budget: had
my friend's attention been directed to it I might have lost a striking
example of the paradoxer in search of a patron. That my Friend was on this
scent in the first letter is revealed in the second. Language was given to
man to conceal his thoughts; but it is not every one who can do it.

Among the most valuable information which my readers will get from me is
comparison of the reactions of paradoxers, when not admitted to argument,
or when laughed at. Of course, they are misrepresented; and at this they
are angry, or which is the same thing, take great pains to assure the
reader that they are not. So far natural, and so far good; anything short
of concession of a case which must be seriously met by counter-reasons is
sure to be misrepresentation. My friend Mr. James Smith and my friend Mr.
Reddie are both terribly misrepresented: they resent it by some
insinuations in which it is not easy to detect whether I am a conscious
smotherer of truth, or only muddle-headed and ignorant. [This was written
before I received my last communication from Mr. James Smith. He tells me
that I am wrong in saying that his work in which I stand in the pillory is
all reprint: I have no doubt I confounded some of it with some of the
manuscript or slips which I had received from my much not-agreed-with
correspondent. He adds that my mistake was intentional, and that my reason
is obvious to the reader. This _is_ information, as the sea-serpent said
when he read in the newspaper that he had a mane and tusks.]

THE DOUBLE VAHU PROCESS.

My friend Dr. Thorn[661] sees deeper into my mystery. By the way, he still
sends an occasional touch at the old {361} subject; and he wants me
particularly to tell my readers that the Latin numeral letters, i