The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1877-10-04
After-ThOughts.

ton, as Bernard Barton remarks in one
of his letters to Crabbe, that the thing
you might and should have said occurs to
YOU Just little too late. He draws on
his own experience for the record of many
a long and animated discussion with q
friend, after which he calls to mind some
pithy argument that would have smashed
his opponents case, and which, affirms
the gentle Quaker poet, 81 should have
been almost sure to have had at my fin
gers ends had been quietly arguing the
matter 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 recollect 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 ifpid, and the apropos very
probably forgotten. Vanity, as we'll as
vexation of spirit.
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 af-
terward; as it was, he had never word
in answer. Mr.. Thackeray's writings
offer divers illustrations of the same kind.
There is Mr.. Bachelor, for instance, when
impertinently quizzed to his face, by that
supercilious Captain Baker. "'Sir! says
l, sir, was all l could say. The fact is,
| could have replied with something re-
markably neat and cutting, which would
have transfiXed the languid little jacka
nape, but, you see, only thought of my
repartee some eight hours afterward,
when l was lying in bed, and am sorry
to own that great number of my best
bon mots have been made in that way"
DR.. Holmes suggestively records, on
the subject of mistakes and slips in writ
ings, 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 discon-
certed; that the right answer to argument
never occurred to him Immediately. 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
poem
speech, only quick to blush its own delay,
Made me a fool, when fools had their own
way,
And awkward silent when conceit was loud"
Charlotte Bronte relates how Mr..
Thackeray met her at the door, at the
close of one of bis readings. and frankly
asked her what she thought of it; and
how, liking his ndtpete, she was entirely
disposed to praise him, having plenty of
praise in her heart, "but, alas no words
on my lips. Who has words at the right
moment l stammered out some lame
expressions 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 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 side of the question" And
so, again, John Sercolaske, introduced by
Philip van Arteyelde as our "sagacious
friend"-than whom a better counsellor
need not be, if only he have full scope
beforehand to ponder and devise what to
say; but task him on the sudden" a SIM
pie enough question, and
-"Confounded will he stand
Till livelier tongues from emptier heads have
spoken,
Then on the morrow to a title know
hat hon h.... Il
In SHAPE TO BE ANswERED.-In
some of the courts not long since there
came up for trial case in which China.
man was the complaining witness against
white man. During the empanelling
Of the jury one of the attorneys ques-
toned closely the men summoned as
jurors, to ascertain their views on the Chi
nese question. He asked one of them:
would you believe Chinaman under
oath2"
The witness RESPONDED in the affirma-
tive.
"Would you believe a Chinaman as soon
as you would white mani"
SWELL" hesitatingly, 81 would believe
him as soon as | would some white men,"
THAT isn't an answer to my question.
now ask you, and desire categorical
answer, would you believe Chinaman as
soon as you would believe me, or the at
torney for the defence, for instancei"
80, yes, sir certainly
The attorney did not appear to feel
much better after he found out