"Afterthought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a pen on the ink-stand," said he, quietly, stooping, over some papers on a corner of the table. Then he added, apparently as an afterthought: ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Noel cheerily. "I believe I'm going to be married some time soon by the way," he added as an afterthought. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... B, shows the plans of the house, which will be seen to be a modification of the Southern "saddle-bag" cabin—two houses under one roof. By referring to Fig. 289 it will be seen that above the gallery there is a portico, which we called the "afterthought" because it did not appear upon the original plans. We got the hint, as "Jimmy" called it, when it was noticed that chance had ordained that the two "A" logs should protrude much farther than the others. "Don't saw them off," I exclaimed; ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... If she had felt and acted toward me like a sister I would have been loyal to her, and would have compelled even Miss Wildmere to recognize her rights. I am not so far gone but that I can act in a straightforward, honorable way. My acceptance of her action was an afterthought, a philosophical way I have of making the best of everything. I now believe that it has turned out for the best, but I have been guilty of no coldblooded calculation. Very well, I'll treat her as a simple, natural girl and ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... during those halcyon days (the halcyon was there, too, chattering above every creek, as he is all over the world) we fought another battle. It has not got into history, but it had a real objective existence although by a felicitous afterthought called by us who were defeated a "reconnaissance in force." Its short and simple annals are hat we marched a long way and lay down before a fortified camp of the enemy at the farther edge of a ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... memory would be the extreme of his sufferings, till one Sunday, the red-haired girl announced that she would make a study of Dick's head, and that he would be good enough to sit still, and—quite as an afterthought—look at Maisie. He sat, because he could not well refuse, and for the space of half an hour he reflected on all the people in the past whom he had laid open for the purposes of his own craft. He remembered Binat most distinctly,—that Binat who had once been an ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... him against me. And yet I know not how or in what manner. If he should prove my brother, the world is wide enough for us both; let him keep out of my way, if he can. Depend upon it, doctor, he is acting upon an afterthought. He has been forced into a desperate course. You marked his abject cowardice at the gangway. During the many hours that he was in irons, before that punishment he so much dreaded was inflicted, why did he not then send ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... beside the stone. There were two double-bitted axes and one pole axe, two brush hooks, three mowing scythes, a hatchet, a meat cleaver, half a dozen knives, both long and short—to say nothing of a drawing knife, some chisels and planes, which were added to the pile as an afterthought. ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... this estate, and he spent nearly an hour in the agent's company, looking at ground-plans and discussing the Nicholl and other mortgages; it was as it were by an afterthought that he brought up the question of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the French right, and threaten the centre at Charleroi, and that Von Buelow could cross the Sambre and Von Kluck encircle the British flank. The strength which the Germans developed in Belgium and the extension of their right wing are said to have been an afterthought due to the intervention of the British Expeditionary Force; but the original German plan required some such modification when the presence of British troops lengthened the line of ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... had eaten, Heer Marais asked my father and myself to speak with him in the sitting-room. By an afterthought also, or so it seemed to me, he told his daughter, who had been clearing away the dishes and with whom as yet I had found no opportunity to talk, to come in with us and close ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... crooks of Barlow against myself and all the good people of the town? Will you cheat Craney of the price of his road in case he ever comes back? Is this duty? I tell you, no!" And in a flash of afterthought: "The wise old woman herself would cry 'No' from the grave of her. I tell you as one who knows. For she was Regan's mother, and her message of the things she saw beyond the day's work at ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... know the house I want," he said. "Carville's the name. I," he added as if in an afterthought, "am Mr. Carville." And he looked at us gravely, apparently unaware of the turmoil of curiosity which he ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... it, and as she read it again, she felt that neither Maurice nor her cousin Fred could have written the like, but she was only the more impelled to do battle, and when she came to the unlucky conclusion, she exclaimed, 'I am sure that was an afterthought. I dare say Price asked ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was aware of a light step, a swishing, sibilant, delightful rustling—the caress of sound is the rustling of a well-groomed woman's skirts—and of an afterthought of violets, of a mere reminiscence of orris, all of which came toward him through the dimness of the hall. ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... mortal man nothing forswear, For resolution yields to afterthought. Little I looked hither to come again, So pelted with the hailstorm of thy threats. But the good fortune that surpasses hope Is of all pleasant things the pleasantest; And so I come in spite of all my oaths, ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... rebelled against Jupiter. There was one who was noble, and wise, and kind, who did not rebel, and kept his brother from doing so. His name was Prometheus, which means Forethought; his brother's was Epimetheus, or Afterthought; their father was Iapetus. When all the other Titans had been buried under the rocks, Jupiter bade Prometheus mould men out of the mud, and call on the winds of heaven to breathe life into them. Then Prometheus ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she's had a respectable winter coat because she pledged herself to provide for several old ladies in the Home for the Friendless. She has a whole host of doless relatives, whom she props up whenever they need it, and," as though an afterthought, "they always need it." ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... far in front and the thunder of the German guns replying came back to their ears. It was a louder note in the general and ceaseless murmur of the battle, but the young men paid it only a passing moment of attention. Carstairs presently added as an afterthought: ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... when they see one, as well as my lady," he said. Then he added, as if by an afterthought, lowering his voice a little: "By the way, Mr. Lightmark, there was a young lady—a young person ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... is, fame may be a forethought and an afterthought, but it is too abstract an idea to move people greatly in moments of swift and momentous decision. It is from something more immediate, some determination of blood to the head, some trick of the fancy, that the breach is stormed or the bold word spoken. I am sure a fellow shooting an ugly weir ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seen the gun mounted on the tower of Friar's Park and I assure you it was not placed there yesterday. In short, I have no doubt that it was put there in anticipation of Sir Marcus's visit and only employed in your case as a sort of afterthought. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... Lycidas, 'and still he smiled as he spoke, with laughing eyes, and laughter dwelling on his lips.' In Cos, Theocritus found friendship, and met Myrto, 'the girl he loved as dearly as goats love the spring.' Here he could express, without any afterthought, an enthusiastic adoration for the disinterested joys, the enchanted moments of human existence. Before he entered the thronged streets of Alexandria, and tuned his shepherd's pipe to catch the ear of princes, and to sing the epithalamium of a royal and incestuous love, he rested with his ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... it became very celebrated in his time. The story about Cortez finding a broken-nosed image in the knapsack of one of his soldiers is not mentioned either by himself or Bernal Diaz, and must therefore be an afterthought, to give plausibility to a subsequent imposition. From this point Cortez and his party, without their women or treasures, trudged along to the foot of the hills to Tepeac, or Guadalupe, and thence around the foot of Tezcuco to the plains ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... life there is possible what is called parthenogenesis or virgin-birth. It has, indeed, been ingeniously argued by a distinguished American writer, Professor Lester Ward,[4] that the male sex is to be looked upon as an afterthought, an ancillary contrivance, devised primarily for the advantages of having a second sex—whatever those advantages may exactly be; and secondarily, one would add, becoming useful in adding fatherhood to motherhood ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... III.: the bitter truth that the treaty between France and Prussia contained no single word reserving the rights of the Elector, and that the very idea of qualifying the absolute cession of Hanover was an afterthought, lay hidden in the conscience of the Prussian Cabinet. Never had a Government more completely placed itself at the mercy of a pitiless enemy. Count Haugwitz, on reaching Paris, was received by Napoleon with a storm of invective against the supposed partisans of England at the Prussian ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... As an afterthought, he got up, found a pencil and paper with the hotel's name stamped on them in gold and came back to the chair. Clearing the ashtray aside, he put the paper on the table and divided the paper into three vertical columns with the pencil. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... keeping silence, days, weeks, and months were slipping away; that Reine would soon reach her twenty-third year, and that she would be thinking of marriage. It was well known that she had some fortune, and suitors were not lacking. Even allowing that she had no afterthought in renouncing Claudet, she could not always live alone at the farm, and some day she would be compelled to accept a marriage of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... could turn Shakespeare to his own account. In this picture, obviously, he was creating, and only in a secondary sense illustrating. For him the landscape was the thing. Indeed, the five little figures may have been inserted by him as an afterthought, to point and balance the composition. Vaguely he remembered hearing of Macbeth, or reading it in some translation. Ce Sac-espe're...un beau talent...ne' romantique. Hugo he would not have attempted to illustrate. But Sac-espe're—why not? And so the little figures came upon ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... husband signed the book, using the altar as a table, not very easily for he was no great scholar, and she signed also in her maiden name for the last time, and the priest signed, and at his bidding Emlyn Stower, who could write well, signed too. Next, as though by an afterthought, Father Roger called several of the congregation, who rather unwillingly made their marks as witnesses. While they did so he explained to them that, as the circumstances were uncommon, it was well that there should be evidence, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... after that I lost all interest in these bedside proceedings. I referred the man to the Chronicle office, the bank, and the shipping-office, and requested as a special favour that Mr. Smith should be sent for; also, on a journalistic afterthought, a reporter from the Chronicle. The numbers of the bank-notes had been written down. Oh yes, on the advice of the bank clerk, I had done this carefully at the bank counter, and preserved the record scrupulously—in ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... stick ceased for a moment to tap the cement. "Pooh!" he ejaculated, uneasily. There was a pause, followed by a malevolent chuckle. "At any rate," he said, with joy in the afterthought, "you'll never ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... controlled these vessels for about a hundred and fifty years this sudden change should have been made. But, primarily, any customs organisation must belong to the shore. The employment of cruisers was in its origin really an afterthought to prevent the Crown being cheated of its dues. In other words, the service of sloops and cutters was a kind of off-shoot from the service on land. It was only because the smuggling was so daring, because the Crown was so regularly robbed that some means of ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... young lady," I replied with irritation, "doesn't it occur to you that /I/ may be afraid lest /you/ should die—and /I/ be hanged for it," I added by an afterthought. ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... looking bored. "I only carry out the Senator's wishes," he added, as if with an afterthought. "It is my business to find out whether there is ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of console or capital or cornice. For the importance of the sign renders it constructive, and it has as much right to take part in the design as a door or a window. Instead of being pinned on like an afterthought, it should be built into the wall, panel fashion, and by a little taste in the selection of the style of letter, it might become one of the most striking features of the whole front. Color would be better for the letters than relief, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... shook his head up and down, and from side to side; Musa maintained a stubborn silence.... She was obviously fretted by the doubt, what I was, whether I was a discreet person or a gossip. And if I were discreet, whether it was not with some afterthought in my mind. Her dark, swift, restless eyes fairly flashed to and fro under their half-drooping lids. Only once she glanced at me, but so inquisitively, so searchingly, almost viciously ... I positively started. Baburin scarcely talked to her at all; but whenever he did address her, there was ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Then dark afterthought interposed. It crept like a cloud across her abandoned face. It brought about a change so prompt that ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... of my New Testament idea ... and added to it, as an afterthought, that I also wanted to prosecute a special study of the lyrics of Horace. Though he explained to me that Horace belonged to the college curriculum, his heart expanded. Horace was his favourite ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... tell your majesty, was an afterthought which did not occur to me at the moment; so eager was I for the treasures which displayed themselves to my view, that I did not even stop to admire the magnificent columns and arcades which I saw on ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... yes, on the stroke of ten. We've got a busy day. Let's see now. How are you, by the by?' he added, as an afterthought, catching first one eye, then the other, and looking finally between ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... questions?" and, as though by an afterthought, "will you sit down?" for she had been standing to keep me company out of deference to ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... and cartridges, to which by an afterthought we added two large water-bottles, and ate a hearty breakfast. As we were preparing to start, Shadrach, the leader of the Abati camel-drivers, that man with the scarred face who was nicknamed the Cat, came up to me and ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... to have three days' racing at Yanyilla, and all the country side for miles round gave itself up to the delights of racing; and of course that meant a week's dissipation, just like "cup week" in Melbourne now. The last day was always an off-day—an afterthought—not arranged for in the original programme; I don't know exactly for what reason they held it, except that they thought it a pity not to make out the week. I fancy the races on the last day were very poor affairs, only got up because the men had got the racing fever ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... and Byways," that he was the author of "Beautiful Thoughts from Greek authors; Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian authors, etc."; [29] indeed, the publication of this particular book, as late as 1868, seems to have been an afterthought. How greatly one would prefer a few more "Nooks and By-ways" to all these Beautiful Thoughts! He must have been at home again, in some bleak Caledonian retreat, when the poetic flowers were gathered. If only he had lingered longer among the classic remains ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... returned to the scene wherein she had suffered so much. She expressed a great deal of misery at leaving her precious Evelyn so long, but she did not feel that it was right for her to throw her life away. In a postscript to this letter she informed Maria, as if it were an afterthought, that she had let the house in Edgham furnished. She said it injured a house to remain unoccupied so long, and she felt that she ought to keep the place up for her poor father's sake, he had thought so much of it. She added that the people who rented it had no children except a grown-up daughter, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and the entente cordial with him becomes the foreign policy of England. Entangled in his toils, she makes war on Russia as his ally, stands silently while he humbles Austria and changes the map of Europe, and barely escapes by an afterthought being dragged into an attempt to destroy a free republic in America, to enable France to augment the area for the expansion of the Latin race at the expense of that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... afterthought, it occurred to Fandor that probably there had never been such a light-hearted occupant of ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... a copy of it. You will see that I would have it thought, that now Hannah is gone, I have no way to correspond out of the house. I am far from thinking all I do right. I am afraid this is a little piece of art, that is not so. But this is an afterthought. The ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... be afraid of being fond of Baby." Even passion had to own that the words had the ring of remorse, of insight, of certainty, and, above all, of haste. Such haste as precluded all deliberation. Evidently it was an afterthought. It had come to her, inopportunely, in the last moment before flight, and she had given it the place and the importance she would naturally give to a subject in which she herself was ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... wondering smile, as though he himself could hardly believe what the gods had put into his head, or that the gift was real gold, it glittered so at first sight. On that point I could reassure him. My open jealousy made me admire soberly. But when he told me, quite suddenly, as though on an afterthought, that he meant to make a play of it and not a story, I had the solid satisfaction at that moment of calling him ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a perfect example of Mark Twain's humorous manner, the delicately timed pause, and the afterthought. Most humorists would have been contented to end with the statement, "I could have gone earlier." Only Mark Twain could have added that final ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Wallace has to offer on the pattern of colours, as distinguished from a mere brilliancy of colour, are added as an afterthought suggested to him by the late Mr. Alfred Tylor's book on Colouration of Animals and Plants (1886). But, in the first place, it appears to me that Mr. Wallace has formed an altogether extravagant estimate of the value of this work. For the object of the work ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... at As-You-Like-It, which I had mentioned in my letter to Lady Adeline as containing the one bright spot in that gloomy abode, was an addition tacked on to the end of the house, and evidently an afterthought. It was entered by a flight of shallow steps from the hall, and was above the level of the public road, which ran close past that end of the house, the grounds and approach being on the other side. It was lighted by three high narrow ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... know what you must have thought of us. I don't know what Mr. Ford must have thought. I don't know how to apologise. But the first thing we did, the very first——Mrs. Gregg and the bouquet were a mere afterthought, we just tacked her on to the programme so that the poor little woman wouldn't feel out of it. She is a silly little thing, you know. Not more than a child after all. It was ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... that I'd give up everything without an afterthought. I'll give up the money and I'll make Lebrun and Lester shut up without a word. I'll make them play square and not try to knife Landis in the back. I'll do all that willingly—for you! But, Garry, I can't give up taking Landis back to Lebrun's ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... about the dogs and told Allison that Romeo was said to have the finest collection of fishing tackle in the State. Much gratified, Romeo invited Allison to go fishing with him as soon as the season opened, and, as an afterthought, politely included ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... I wanted comfort, that I knew, and I said so. I mentioned, as an afterthought, that Mr. Heathcroft had recommended Bancroft's ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... solemn, Each thought filled just a spinal column. If one brain found the pressure strong It passed a few ideas along; If something slipped his forward mind 'Twas rescued by the one behind; And if in error he was caught He had a saving afterthought. As he thought twice before he spoke He had no judgments to revoke; For he could think, without congestion, Upon both sides ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... and Nassau Streets, is a commonplace structure, with a fairly good cornice, on top of which—an afterthought, probably—a miniature State Capitol has been added, with dome and colonnade complete. The result recalls dear, absent-minded Miss Matty (in Mrs. Gaskell’s charming story), when she put her best cap on top of an old one and sat smiling at her visitors ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... the coffee as usual," said the purchaser, producing a coin from a wonderful metal-work purse. As an apparent afterthought he fired out the question: "Have you, perhaps, ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... was an afterthought—to make it look like the other," suggested Lane. He added, after a moment, "Or for revenge, because Horikawa killed my uncle. If he did, fate couldn't have sent a ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... it you do—and I'll be better off," he said. And then as an afterthought he added: "Gulden might not think you—a white elephant on his hands!... Remember his way, the cave and ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... answered Martin; "may you soon be with God." Then he added, by an afterthought, "What is your name? I should like ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... money than you want, and brains and education, of which you are making very poor use, and friends, whom you are treating badly. I can't think what you have lost—unless it was your heart, perhaps." This I brought in in the way of afterthought, as if it had suddenly occurred to me. He started, but assumed a tone of ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... remarkably handsome, and his piercing dark eyes, although they enhanced the smile that greeted my appearance at the instrument, seemed to search into my very soul and to hold me spellbound with mute challenge. Nor could I, upon afterthought, remember having shown the common courtesy of ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... to be 'tactful' with his wife, God help him!—or a woman with her husband," he added in a sudden tender afterthought. "We've never been 'tactful' with each other, Mary?" She smiled, and put her cheek against his shoulder. "'Tactfulness' between a husband and wife," said Henry Houghton, "is confession that their marriage is a failure. You may tell 'em ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Sicilian expedition, seeing an opportunity for the realization of his ambitious projects, which included the conquest of Sicily, to be followed by that of Peloponnesus and possibly of Carthage (though this seems to have been an afterthought). The expedition was decided upon with great enthusiasm, and Alcibiades, Nicias and Lamachus were appointed joint commanders. But, on the day before the expedition sailed, there occurred the mysterious ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Lincoln, in 1232, and is in the purest style of E.E. Joceline's design ended on the N. and S. with the string courses above the top groups of statuary. The towers, which add immensely to the general impressiveness of the whole, were an afterthought. They are Perp. work. The S. tower was built by Bishop Harewell in 1366-86, and its fellow did not follow till 1407-24, when it was constructed by the executors of Bishop Bubwith. The latter differs from its companion only in the possession of two canopied niches ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... a very kind young man, a really kind young man. I accept your offer—I suppose He won't mind," she added as an afterthought, shrugging her shoulders; "and ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... little worrier in the trade, Old Lame-Boy is. He just pesters folks into taking proper care of themselves. They get Certina, and we get their dollars. And they get their money's worth, too," he added as an afterthought for Hal's benefit, "for it's a mighty good thing to have your kidneys tonicked up at ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the affair to me,' he said. 'Unless I were sure of my man, I should not be such a fool as to bring him here to listen to what I shall say to him to-night;' then he added as an afterthought, 'When once we have begun, Baron von Elmur, there can be no going back. Remember that! The game must now be played to the end, ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... the requested task Davy took hasty survey of the surroundings. The stables and house were of the same architecture: rambling log structures that seemed to have been erected after many an afterthought. The front door of the house was open. Landy closed it, and circled the house to see that all other openings were closed. He then mounted and motioned Davy to follow the bulls to water. Here, Landy circled the cows and calves. "Thar's twenty-six of 'em," he commented, ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... a clergyman's widow to render some secretarial service, and the ambitious Mrs. Badger had applied, duly weeded. Meanwhile the elderly Lady T. had seen her fiance and with the young person in pink, and it was a brilliant and base afterthought to bribe the clergyman's widow to claim the girl as her long-missing daughter (invented). Both the young Lord and the young person, too much in love perhaps to be critical, accept the situation; but you haven't quite got ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... remembrance of our dear children, pledges—what darling ones!—of our old familiar love; then, a delicious impulse to pour out the overflowings of my heart into yours; and last, not least, the knowledge that your dear eyes will read what my hand is now writing. Perhaps there is an afterthought that, whatever may befall me, the wife of my bosom will have the acknowledgment of her tenderness, worth, excellence—all that is wifely or womanly, from my pen." In another letter, also written to his wife ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... Great Scientist, "helium shares in the most intimate degree the properties of radium. So, too, for the matter of that," he added in afterthought, "do thorium, and borium!" ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... quickly to the table and put down the message. Then, going to the door, she paused as though by an afterthought, and repeated ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... aside the whole work, got to his feet with the imperative need of an athlete for the open. He started out of the room, but as an afterthought scribbled a nervous line, telling the Captain he might not be back for dinner. Then he found his hat and coat and walked briskly around the piazza to ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... compositor. Out of the love of mere type quickly evolves a love of mere words for their own sake; but whether we shall make use of them as a historian, novelist, philosopher, or poet, is a secondary consideration, a mere afterthought. To Henry Mesurier had already come the time when the face of life began to Wear a certain aspect, the peculiar attraction of which for himself he longed to fix, a certain mystical importance attaching to the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... p. 416); the work in question is the 1773 Johnson-Steevens edition of Shakespeare's plays. The remark quoted is from the last paragraph of a long review beginning in November and seems almost an afterthought, for the same reviewer had said that the edition "deserves to be considered as almost entirely the production of Mr. Steevens" (p. 346). In a sense this is true, but the basis for the commentary in the 1773 edition was still the approximately 5600 notes, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... "I only wished to assure myself that what I was told was true. I found it hard to believe, even when I saw your name written up in the hotel. Before I go, let me congratulate you on your conquest—and Mr. Mark Bower on his," she added, with clever pretense of afterthought. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... men parted, Jonathan said, in a kind of afterthought way, "There's a full meeting of the Gentlemen's Club tonight, sir. I suppose ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... hint at this intention. But the claim is clearly untenable. He had no means of defensive retreat—no provisions, no transportation for his arms and equipage, no supply of ammunition. The suggestion is an evident afterthought. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... fighting teeth are blunted runs from the field before his foe. With many an afterthought ran Gisli. Gone is ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... reticule was the paper on which he had written the address of the Art Students' League, and, as an afterthought, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... irresponsible exhilaration was inciting her to a daring utterly foreign to her nature? She heard herself laugh, knew that she was young, pretty, capable of provocation. And in a sudden, breathless sort of way an overwhelming desire seized her to please, to charm, to be noticed by such a man — whatever, on afterthought, he might think of ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... something indelicate. To be altogether right, they should have had twin birth together, at the same moment with the feeling that unites them. Then indeed it would be simple and perfect and without reserve or afterthought. Then they would understand each other with a fulness impossible otherwise. There would be no barrier between them of associations that cannot be imparted. They would be led into none of those comparisons that send the blood back to the heart. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and (need I mention?) approached it to his face, he fancied he could detect just a trace, just the faintest reminder, of a perfume—something like an afterthought of orris. It was by no means anodyne. It was a breath, a whisper, vague, elusive, hinting of things exquisite, intimate of things intimately feminine, exquisitely personal. I don't know how many times he ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... climbed up to the ledge, bringing with him the coil of rope and the hatchet. As an afterthought he had added a paper bag ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... wasn't. They could actually talk about supper. Well, let them. He didn't care! He spoke with sharp sternness: "Leave the pantry window undone for me to get in by when I've done my detecting. Come on, Mabel." He caught her hand. "Bags I the buns, though," he added, by a happy afterthought, and snatching the bag, pressed it on Mabel, and the sound of four boots echoed on the pavement of the High Street as the outlines of the running Mabel grew small ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... ready. For this stream of apt illustrations he was indebted to his extraordinary memory, and his rapid eye for contrasts and analogies. They come to the end of his pen as he writes; they are not laboriously hunted out in indexes, and then added by way of afterthought and extraneous interpolation. Hence quotations and references that in a writer even of equal knowledge, but with his wits less promptly about him, would seem mechanical and awkward, find their place in a page of Macaulay as if ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... As an afterthought he added: "Better still, we are spending a fortnight there, and I should be happy if you would spend the time with us. You could—ah—then examine the place ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... soon done; and in accordance with his afterthought, he sat down on a projecting angle of the statue's marble couch, in the inmost corner of the vault, facing the door, and having the pool of the fountain interposed between ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... gentle but firm! He went on reading, but said, most kindly, "Well, Luce, well—" adding, on an afterthought, "How can ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... somewhat pinched about the lips, but having such eyes and brows as belong to the few accustomed to confront great thoughts. It gave her the ineffable touch of greatness which more than redeemed her shabby black gown and antique bonnet; and, on an afterthought, the old gentleman decided that it must have been beautiful in its day. Just now it was pale, and one hand clutched the silk shawl crossed upon her bosom. He noted, too, that the hand was shapely, though roughened with housework where the mitten did ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and the calm thinker both find that the only true Beauty proceeds naturally from the actual construction of that which it expresses. It is not something added on as an afterthought, but something pre-existing in the original idea, something to which that idea naturally leads up, and which presupposes that idea as affording it any raison d'etre. The test of Beauty is, What does it express? Is it merely a veneer, ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... the scheme of the poem. The gloss with which it was subsequently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at the time, at least not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no doubt it was a gratuitous afterthought. We began the composition together on that to me memorable evening. I furnished two or three lines at the beginning of the poem, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... it could be buyin' a grand home in Irelan', the same," Bridget beamed; and then she added, struck forcibly with an afterthought: "But what would be the sense of a home anywheres but here—furninst—within easy reach of a crutch or a wheeled ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... Stetson, sir. Right away, sir. But I thought I was through with old Rediscovery & Reeducation when you drafted me off of Hamal into the I-A ... sir." He began changing from the I-A blue to the R&R white. Almost as an afterthought, he said: ...
— Missing Link • Frank Patrick Herbert
... to the fag of burying the swag?" said Tommy once they were safe within the shelter of The Cedars gates. "Let's take it to one of your bedrooms. Besides," he added; as if this were quite an afterthought, as indeed it was, "I don't want to spoil the things, and burying them might damage the miniatures. Let's shove them into a drawer in your room. Better go on first, Jack, and see if ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... lift ten ships the size of the Lester Dawes. Then you need another fifty to a hundred tons of collapsium to shield your cutting-head. The cutting-head alone weighs three tons. The rotary beam that does the cutting," he mentioned as an afterthought, "is about the size ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... at one end of it and a nice new bullet at the other. There he was, all prepared to deal with an emergency, and there was the emergency confronting him. Having had a good look at it, he contented himself with saying "Halt! wer da?" adding as an afterthought a threatening move forward. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... interests. In fact it was a long, long time before Stewart had anything to say on that subject. If Senator Corson had been listening again on the other side of the screen, he, no doubt, would have been mightily offended by a delay which seemed to make the father an afterthought ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... was an afterthought. There aren't any stamps for afterthoughts; the sums vary, according to inspiration, and they whirl in the one that suggests itself at the last moment. Sometimes they go several times higher than this one. This one only means hog ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... never mind if it's a John the Baptist love or a mother love or a fever produced by the tropics, as Wullie said, you've to do things as best you can and understand them afterwards, just trusting that God will burn out all the beastliness of them in the end. And—" she added, as an afterthought, "If he gets drunk I'll shake ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... proverb says, "helped by our brawest cleeding;" but I soon saw that it was only a pro forma dinner, and that there was nothing of cordiality in all the civility with which we were treated, both by my lord and my lady. Nor, indeed, could I, on an afterthought, blame our noble entertainers for being so on their guard; for in truth some of the deacons, (I'll no say any of the bailies,) were so transported out of themselves with the glory of my lord's banquet, and the thought of dining at the castle, and at the first ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... and heaps of things that I never wrote a line of poetry about. But how could I help it?—that beautiful letter, and the Happy Hexagons, and all! It just wrote itself. I sent it East, too, to a magazine, two or three times—but they didn't put it in," she added, as an afterthought. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... generally. At first it was affirmed that some people at Cape Comorin said that he had raised one person; then it was said that there were two persons; then in various authors—Emanuel Acosta, in his commentaries written as an afterthought nearly twenty years after Xavier's death, De Quadros, and others—the story wavers between one and two cases; finally, in the time of Tursellinus, four cases had been developed. In 1622, at the canonization proceedings, three ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... inflicted upon the enemy, would respond to every demand which could be made upon it, and would thus turn a series of indecisive combats, which the country would surely regard as defeats, into a magnificent victory. Smith's testimony shows this splendid conception to have been no afterthought with Porter, as it was with many who subsequently came to understand the facts of the case, but coming as it did hot from a desperate battle field, must be regarded as the inspiration of true military genius, while the fact that McClellan ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... it is worth while to dwell for a moment on this, because we are often told that there is no trace of the doctrine of an atoning sacrifice in the Gospels, and the inference is drawn that it was an afterthought of the apostles, and therefore to be set aside as an excrescence on Christianity according to Christ. The silence of Jesus on that subject is exaggerated; but certainly no thought of His being the Sacrifice for the sins of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... we ever should get out of this ghastly hole. So I just put my fist into the first chest and filled all the available pockets of my old shooting-coat and trousers, topping up—this was a happy thought—with a few handfuls of big ones from the third chest. Also, by an afterthought, I stuffed Foulata's basket, which, except for one water-gourd and a little biltong, was empty now, with great quantities of ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... town," Bloom said, as if by an afterthought. "Put it in the form of a contract, Mr. Gunterson, and I'll notify him to-day that we're holding his supplies subject to ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... about three inches apart tacked into the back wall. Air ducts, inexpensively made from perforated plastic septic system leach line, are laid between the slats to greatly enhance air flow. I wouldn't initially build a bin array with ducted floors; these can be added as an afterthought if necessary. ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... was the substance of what she said, although she did not put it quite so neatly. Then, as though by an afterthought, she asked when her cousin Jules, a young notary of Berne, was coming to ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... to detect attitudes and affectation than we are apt to imagine; and Cissy could distinguish a certain other straying in this afterthought or moral of the preacher called up by her presence, and knew that it was not the real interest which the view had evoked. She had heard that he had been a sailor, and, with the tact of her sex, answered with what she ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... make him understand about her when she was sick. He let that squalling brat crawl over her, and let her do baking and things she wasn't fit to do till she was worn out," the old doctor said resentfully. Then added as an afterthought, "Say! You're not letting him run ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... to be an afterthought. Lydia wondered if he hadn't felt like thanking anybody in years. There seemed to be nothing for her to do in this rigid sort of reunion, and she went back to Anne in ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... police will think mother and father have got them, and that they've only given up some of them for a kind of desperate blind. And they'll be put in prison, and we shall be branded outcasts, the children of felons. And it won't be at all nice for father and mother either,' she added, by a candid afterthought. ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... following the service was an afterthought. The audiences steadily grew. It was and is the most cosmopolitan audience I ever saw. I wanted to get acquainted with the people and suggested a sort of reception in the chapel. The ladies of the ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... bodies. From the front windows of the house one saw across Hampstead Heath towards London, and from the back windows one saw across the Heath towards Harrow. The house, in spite of its slight decrepitude and the clumsiness of its construction—the stairs were obviously an afterthought of the architect—had that air of comfortable kindliness which is only to be seen in houses which have been occupied by several generations of human beings. Mr. Haverstock was vaguely known as a sociologist. He investigated the affairs ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... whatever be your doctrine of Christ's person, you must confess that he considered himself no accident of history; that he did not regard his life work as originating in his own choice; that his sense of a mission did not come as an afterthought to him, or grow clear as he advanced in life. He felt his special errand from the start. It was always before his mind, so that life was to him the performance of a given task and the fulfillment ...
— Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn • George Tybout Purves
... called Urim and Thummim for the "peek-stone" was doubtless an idea of the associate in the plot, who supplied the theological material found in the Golden Bible. Tucker considers the "spectacle pretension" an afterthought of some one when the scheme of translating the plates into a Bible was evolved, as "it was not heard of outside of the Smith family for a considerable period subsequent to the first story."* This is confirmed by the elder ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn |
