Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1890 — Thinking Aloud. [ARTICLE]

Thinking Aloud.

It is said that Goldsmith could ndt conceal his thoughts, but blurted out what was uppermost in his mind. And this man, according to Forster, was the true author of the saying about speech being given to man to conceal his thoughts. He gave the lie every day to his own epigram. So accustomed was he to give utterance to every idea as it arose in his mind, that anybody familiar with him might with confidence have accused him of having said anything that he had really thought. Burke once saw him standing near a crowd of people who were staring and shouting at some foreign women in the windows of a fashionable hotel. Afterward Burke charged him with saying: “What stupid beasts the crowd must be for staring with such admiration at those painted Jezebels, while a man of my talent passes by unnoticed.” Goldsmith protested, but at length answered with great humility: “I do recollect that something of the kind passed through my mind, but I did not think that I had uttered it.” “Thinking with a pen” is very closely allied to thinking aloud. Lamartine was wont to scribble all over his proof-sheets; and De Quincey, to the great astonishment of the printers, covered some of his with diatribes against his liver, blue pill and other mundane matters. Lord Dudley was greatly addicted to the habit of favoring all near him with his thoughts. Once, having handed a royal lady into dinner, he was scarcely seated before he began to soliloquize aloud: “What bores these royalties are! Ought I to drink wine with her as I would with any other woman?” And in the same tone he continued: “May I have the honor of a glass of wine with your royal highness ?” Toward the end of dinner he asked her again. "With great pleasure, my lord,” she replied, smiling; “but I have had one glass with you already.” “And so she has!” was the rejoinder, perfectly audible to all.