The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1875-07-22
Aner.Theughts.

"A writer says: How every often II
happens in conversation, as Bernard Bar
ton remarks in one of mis- letters to Crabbe
that the thing you might and would and
should have said occurs to you just 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, ard which, aft ms the
gentle Quaker poet, 81 should have been
almost sure to have had at my fingers
ends had l .een quietly arguing the mat
ter Oh paper in my own sSudy." Cowper
complains that when he wrote letter to
any but familiar friend, no sooner had
he dispatched AZ 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
vexation of spirit.
Little Henry Esmond, when pointed
out by saucy 1rix to my Lord rs say
ing his prayers to mamma" could only
look very silly. If he invented half
dozen of speeches in reply, that was
months afterward; Gas it was, he had
never word in answer" Mr.. Thack-
eray's writings offer divers illustrations
of the same kind. There is Mr.. Batch
lOr, for instance, when impertinently
quizzed to his face bv that supercilious
Captain Baker. "Sir' says ]; sir" was
all could say. The fact is, could have
replied with something remarkably neat
fixed the languid little jackanapes,
but, you see, only thought of my re-
partee some eight hours afterward, when
| was lying in bed, ard am sorry to own
that great number of nv best bon mots
have been made in that way"
DIR. Holmes suggestively records on the
subject Of mistakes and slips in writing,
that he 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-
certed that the right answer to an argu
ment erOccurred to him Immediately.
l." | always find it at last, but it comes too
late; q blocEhead who speaks boldly can
battle me-" A state of mind figured in a
modern poem:
"--Coniounded will he stand
Till lyelier tongues from emptier heads have
spoken;
Then on the morrow to 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 askod d
her what she thought Of it; and how lik-
ing his ndirete 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 en-
pressions" doubtless hit on some
neat and pithy eulogium soon after his
back was turned.
The good dame in one of Mrs. GaskelPs
fictiOns is speaking for thousands when
she says of the rector and his wife that
they both talk so much rs to knock one
down, like; and it's not till they have
gone, and ones 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 Arteveldc as
our 'sagacious friend"-than whom n
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 fool, when fools had their own way,
And awkwnrd-silent when cOnceii was lond.h