The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1875-06-25
After-Thoughts.

A writer says: How very often il
happens il conversation, as Bernard
Barton tef.arks ii dis of his letters tc
Crabbe, that the thing You might and
should have said occurs to you Just 8
little too late. He draws on his OWL
experience for the record of many a long
and aniraashd dissAssioa 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, ssI should have
been almost sire to have had at my
fingers ends had been dIiietly arguing
the matter on paper In my own study. u
| Cowper complains that when he wrote q
letter to any but familiar friend, no
sooner had he despatched it than he was
sure to recollect how much better he
could have made it. Horace Walpole
| opens his epistlo with the remark that
mere answers that afe not made to let.
ters immediately are like good things
which people recollect they might have
said had they but Thought of them in
time; that is, very insfpid, and the
apropo8 very probably forgotten. Van
ity, as we'll as vexa4ion 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 word in answer" Mr.. Thack-
eray's writings offer divers illustrations
of the same kind. There is Mr.. Batch
elor, for instance, when impertihently
quizzed to his face by that supetcilious
Bo1 -
all could SAY. The fact is, I coiild
have replied with something remarkably
neat and cutting, which would have
transfxed the languid little jackanapes,
X but, you see, I only thought
of my repartee some eight hours after
ward, when was lying in bed, and I
am sorry to own that great number of
my best bon TIot8 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 assigned as the reason for his not
reading for the bar that he was so easily
disconnected !; that the right answer to
argument never occurred to him i'm
mediately. 'T alway find it at last,
but it comes too late y a blockhead who
speaks boldly can battle me-" A state
of mind figured in g modern poem:
''Speech, only quick to blush it's own delay,
Made me fool, when fools had their own way,
And awkward silent when concsit was loud. !"
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, liking his 1aaiVete 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 moment? [ 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. Gas
kell'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 little at
peace, that one can think there are
things one might have said on ones own |
side of the question" And so again
John Sercolaske, introduced by Philip |
van Artevelde as our {" "sagacious friend
than whom better counsellor need |
not be, if only he have full scope be-
forehand to ponder and devise what to
say; but task him on the sudden |
simple enough question, and
"-Confounded will he stand
Til livelier tongues from emptier heads have |
spoken;
Then on the morrow to a title known
What should have been his answer"