Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1875-07-24

Aner.ThOughts.

A writer says: How every often it
! happens in conversation, rs Bernard Bar
| ton remarks in one Of mis- letters to Crabbc,
that the thing you might and would and
should have said occurs TO you Just 4 lit
tie too late. He draws on his own ex-
perience for the record of many long
and animated discussion with friend, af-
ter which he called to mind some pithy
argument that would have smashed his
opponents case, and which, afiirms the
gentle Quaker poet, / should have been
almost sure to have had at my fingers
ends had | been quietly arguing the mat
ter on paper in my own study" Cowper
complains that when he wrote letter to
any but familiar friend, no sooner had
he dispatched it than he was sure to re-
collect how much better he could have
made it. Horace Walpole opens his
epistle with the remark that mere an
swers that are not made to letters i'm
mediately are like good things which peo-
pie recollected they might have said had
they but thought of them in time that
is, very insipid, and the apropOs very
probably forgotten. Vanity, as well as
VeXatlon OF spirit.
Little Henry Esmond, when pointed
out by saucy Trix to my Lord as " say
ing his prayers to mamma" could only
look very silly. If he invented half
dozen of speeches in reply, that was
months afterward; as it was, he had
never a word in answer" Mr.. Thack-
eray's writings offer divers illustrations
of Al ,o,,o i.;nJ Tbaro - NTr Rotcha
lor, for instance, when impertinently
quizzed to his face by that supercilious
Captain Baker "Sir.' saysI " sir" was
all could say. The fact is, could have
replied with something remarkably neat
and cutting, which would have trans
fixed the languid little jackanapes, X
but, you see, / only thought of my re-
partee some eight hours atterward, when
| was lying in bed, and am sorry TO own
that a great number of my best bon m0tS
have been made in that way"
DR.. Holmes suggeStively records on the
subject OF mistakes and slips in writing
that lie never finds them out until they
are stereotyped, and then he thinks they
rarely escape him. Southey once as
signed as the reason for his not reading
for the bar that he was so easily discon-
ccrted that the right answer to IN argu-
ment never occurred to him Immediately.
" always find it at last, but it comes too
late Il blockheld who speaks boldly can
battle me-" 4 state Of mind figured III a
modern poem:
-Couiouudcd will ne stand
Till liyeer tongues from empticr heads have
spoken;
Then on the morrow to 4 title know
What should have been his answer"
Charlotte Bronte relates how Mr..
Thackeray met her at the door, ,at the close
of one of his readings, and frankly asked
her what she thought Of it; and how lik
ing his Hoircte she was entirely disposed
to praise him, having plenty of praise in
her heart, "but, alas no word on my
lips. Who has words at the right mo-
ment.? | stammered out some lame ex-
pressions"-and doubtless hit on some
neat and pithy eulogium soon after his
back was turned
The good dame in one of Mrs. Gaskell's
fctions is speaking for thousands when
she says of the rector and his wife that
they /" both talk so much as to knock one
down, like; and it's not till they have
gone, and ones a little at peace, that one
can think there are things one might
have said on ones own side of the ques-
ton" And so again John Sercolaske,
introduced by Philip van Artevelde as
our "sagacious friend"-than whom "a
better counselor need not be, if only he
have full scope beforehand to ponder
and devise what to say; but ask him
on the sudden" simple enough ques-
ton, and
Speech only quick to blush its own delay,
Made me a foo, when fools had their own way,
And awkward-silent when conceit was loud"