Word: sarcasms
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...decry Thackeray as a cynic. While his critics unite in praise of his keen insight into all the foibles and vices of our nature, they are equally unanimous in declaring that he has turned this power to a bad use, that he has made it the vehicle of his sarcasm. An attentive study of all his works, and especially of those parts in which he is accused of bitterness, will discover facts which go far to refute this accusation. Setting aside those passages in which he is justly allowed to have chastised vices rather than faults, and acts more mean...
...mixture of pity. We may blame him for his quickness in discovering our vices and our failings, or for his slowness to appreciate our virtues; we may complain that he seeks the disease rather than the remedy; yet we seldom accuse him of untruth. But Thackeray's sarcasm is a cloak for his compassion. He is content to assume the form of derision, that he may the better excite our indignant pity...
Being under the necessity of purchasing some coal one day, I chanced to ask him, with a slight tinge of sarcasm in my voice, how much coal he had used this winter. He replied, "I have only about half a ton left." Some time after I happened to see one of those little bills with which we are all more or less acquainted; from this I learned that he was indebted to a coal-merchant for just the above-mentioned amount, purchased at the beginning of the year. I then fully understood the import of his answer. He evinced...