Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1875-07-08
Aftcr.ThOughts.

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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 lit
tie too late He draws on his own eX-
pericncc for the record of many long
and animated discussion with friend
after which he called to mind some pithy
argument that would have smashed his
opponents case, and which, affirms the
gentle Quaker poet, g | 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 a familiar friend, no sooner had
he dispatched it than he was sure to recol-
lcct how much better he could have made
it. Horace Walpole opens his epistle
with the remark that mere 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 opropos very probably forgotten.
Vanity, rs well as veXation of spirit.
Little Henry Esmond, when pointed
out by saucy Trix to my Lord as 6 saying
his prayers to mamma" could only look
very silly. If he invented half dozen
of speeches in reply, that was months at.
terward; "as it was, he had never a word
in answer" Mr. Thackcray's writings
offer divers illustrations of the same kind
There is Mr.. Bachelor, for instance, when
impertincntly quizzed to his face by that
supcrcilious Captain Baker. go Sirr says
l; sir was all could say. The fact is,
| could have replied with something re-
markably neat and cutting, which would
have tronstiXed the languid little jacka-
napcs, but, you see, only
thought of my repartee 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 he never finds them out until they are
stercotyped, and then he thinks they rare
" 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 oc-
cured To him Immediately. Il always
find ii at last, but il comes too late; a
blockhead who speaks boldly can battle
me- \ state of mind figured in modern
poem:
Speech, only quick to blush its own delay,
Made me fool, when fools had their own
way,
And awkward silent when conceit was loud.
Charlotte Bronte relates how Mr.. Thack-
cray met her al the door at the close of
one of his readings, and frankly asked her
what she thought OF it, and how, liking
his Rafcete, 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 moments |
stammered 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. Gaskell's
iictions 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 question" And
So agais John Scrcolaske, introduced 10y
Philip van Artc, eide as our "sagacious
iriend"-than whom better counselor
need not be, if only he have full scope he
forehand To ponder and devise what TO say
" bat ask him on the sudden simple
enough question, and
-Couloundcd viii he stand
TIN Hytlicr tongues from vWptiyr heads have
spoken;
Then on the morrow TO q little know
What should have been his answer,