, 1877-10-12
ter-ThOnghtS.

How very often it happens in converse
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
long and animated discussion with a
friend, after which he calls to mind some
pithy argument that would have smashed
his opponents case, and which, attirms
the gentle Quaker poet, ~ 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
u 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 insipid, and the apropos very
probably forgotten. Vanity, as well 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 a half-dozen
of speeches in reply, that was months af-
terward as it was, he had never word
in answer. Mr.. Thackerays 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. "'Sirp says
l, sir was all I could say. The fact is,
l could have replied with something re-
markably neat and cutting, which would
have transfxed the languid little jacka-
nape, but, you see, only thought of my
repartee some eight hours afterward,
when l was lying in bed, and l am sorry
to own that great number of my best
bon mOtS have been made in that way"
DIR. Holmes suggeStively records, on
the subject of mistakes and slips in writ
ngs, 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 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 ndirete, she was entirely
disposed to praise him, having plenty of
praise in her heart, shut, alas no words
ON my lips. Who has words at the right
momeut5 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 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 side of the question" And
so, again, j ohm Sercolaske, introduced by
Philip van Artevelde as our "sagacious
friend"--than whom 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" sim
pie enough question, and
-"Confounded will he stand
| Till llvelier tongues from emptier heads have
spoken,
Then on the morrow to little know
What should have been his answer"
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
oathf"
The witness RESPONDED in the affirma-
tive.
"Would you believe Chinaman as soon
as you would a white mani"
swell, " hesitAtingly, ~ would believe
him As soon as would s0ms white men,"
THAT isn't an answer 10 my question.
now ask you, and desire a categorical
answer, would you believe ChinamAn as
soon a. you would believe me, or the at
torney Tor the defence, for instancef'
80, yes, sir certainly"
The sttorney did not appear 10 feel
much better sitter be found out
TnE Burlington Prss says a queer
penins lives A. Eist Burke man who