The tribune. [volume] (Beaufort, S.C.) 1874-1876, 1875-07-14
After Thoughts.

AisCi 1hOuShso.
A writer says: How very often it hap
pens in conversation, as Bernard Barton
remarks in one of his letters to Crabbe,
that the thing you might and would and
should have said occurs to you just q
little too late. He draws on his own ex-
perience for the record of many long
and animated discussion with friend,
after which he called to mind some
pithy argument that would have smash
ed his opponents case, and which,
affirms the gentle Quaker poet: "1
should have been almost sure to have
had at my fingers ends had I been
quietly arguing the matter on paper in
my own study" Cowper complains that
when he wrote letter to any but fa-
miliar friend, no sooner had he dispatch
ed 1t than he was sure to recollect how
much better he could have made it.
Horace Walpole opens his epistle with
the remark that more answers that are
not made to letters Immediately are like
good things which people recollect they
might have said had they but thought of
them in time; that is, very insipid, and
the apropos very probably forgotten.
Little Henry Esmond, when pointed
out by saucy Trix to my lord as "saying
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 q
word in answer" Mr.. Thackeray's writ
ings offer divers illustrations of the
same kind. There is Mr.. Bachelor, for
instance, when impertinently quizzed
to his face by that supercilious Captain
Baker. "'Sirv says L; sir was all
I could say. The fact is, could have
replied with something remarkably neat
and cutting, which would have transfi1-
ed the languid little jackanapes,
but, you see, only thought of my re-
partee some eight hours afterward, when
1 was lying in bed, and I am sorry to
own that a great number of my best
bon mots have been made in that way" I"
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 assigned as the reason for his not
reading for the bar that he was so easily
disconnected, that the right answer to
an argument never occurred to him i'm
mediately. 81 always find it at last,
but it comes too late blockhead who
speaks boldly can battle me-" A state of
mind figured in a modern poem:
"speech, only quick to blush it's own delay,
Made me fool, when fools had their own
way,
And awkward silent whom conceit was loud. +"
Charlotte Bronte relates how Mr..
Thackery met her at the door, at
the close of one of his readings, and
frankly asked her what she thought of
it; and how, liking his aaivete she was
entirely disposed to praise him, having
plenty of praise in her heart, "but,
alas no word on my lips. Who has
words ut the right moment2 I stammer-
ed out some lame expressions and
doubtless hit on some neat and pithy
eulogium soon after his back was
turned.
The good dame in one of Mrs. Gas
kell's fictions is speaking for thousands
when she Gays of the rector and his
wife that they both talk 80 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 question" And 80
again John Sercolaske, introduced by
Philip van Artevelde rs our sagacious
friend"-than whom 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 question, and
&C. Confounded will he stand
Till livelier tongues from emptier heads have
spoken;
Then on the morrow to q title know
What SHOULD have been his answer.