It was “A.K.H.B.,” if I recollect aright, who wrote a popular essay on “The Art of Putting Things.”  As I know nothing of the essay beyond its title, and am not quite certain about that, I shall not be guilty of intentional plagiarism if I attempt to discuss the same subject.  It is not identical with the theme which I have just handled, for “Things one would rather have expressed differently” are essentially things which one might have expressed better.  If one is not conscious of this at the moment, a good-natured friend is always at hand to point it out, and the poignancy of one’s regret creates the zest of the situation.  For example, when a German financier, contesting an English borough, drove over an old woman on the polling-day, and affectionately pressed five shillings into her hand, saying, “Never mind, my tear, here’s something to get drunk with,” his agent instantly pointed out that she wore the Blue Ribbon, and that her husband was an influential class-leader among the Wesleyans.

But “The Art of Putting Things” includes also the things which one might have expressed worse, and covers the cases where a dexterous choice of words seems, at any rate to the speaker, to have extricated him from a conversational quandary.  As an instance of this perilous art carried to high perfection, may be cited Abraham Lincoln’s judgment on an unreadably sentimental book—­“People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like”—­humbly imitated by two eminent men on this side of the Atlantic, one of whom is in the habit of writing to struggling authors—­“Thank you for sending me your book, which I shall lose no time in reading;” while the other prefers the less truthful but perhaps more flattering formula—­“I have read your blank verse, and much like it”

The late Mr. Walter Pater was once invited to admire a hideous wedding-present, compact of ormolu and malachite.  Closing his eyes, the founder of modern aesthetics leaned back in his chair, and waving away the offending object, murmured in his softest tone, “Oh, very rich, very handsome, very expensive, I am sure.  But they mustn’t make any more of them.”

Dexterities of phrase sometimes recoil with dire effect upon their author.  A very popular clergyman of my acquaintance prides himself on never forgetting an inhabitant of his parish.  He was stopped one day in the street by an aggrieved parishioner whom, to use a homely phrase, he did not know from Adam.  Ready in resource, he produced his pocket-book, and, hastily jotting down a memorandum of the parishioner’s grievance, he said, with an insinuating smile, “It is so stupid of me, but I always forget how to spell your name.”  “J—­O—­N—­E—­S,” was the gruff response; and the shepherd and the sheep went their several ways in mutual disgust.  Perhaps the worst recorded attempt at an escape from a conversational difficulty was made by an East-end curate who specially cultivated the friendship of the artisans.  One day a carpenter arrived in his room, and, producing a photograph, said, “I’ve brought you my boy’s likeness, as you said you’d like to have it.”