Chapter V: Part 5

There can be no question that a well-planted 'P.S.' is of great utility in clinching an argument raised in the main portion of a communication. Thus, when Artemus Ward wrote 'to the editor of ----,' asking for a line concerning the state of the show business in his locality, he knew what he was about. 'I shall hav my hanbills dun at your offiss,' he observed. 'Depend upon it. I want you should git my hanbills up in flamin' stile. Also git up a tremenjus excitement in yr. paper 'bout my onparaleld Show. We must fetch the public sumhow.' Then, at the end, came the summing-up of the whole transaction: 'P.S.--You scratch my back and Ile scratch your back.' There is at least one instance on record in which a postscript was made to convey a smart reproof. Talleyrand, having one day entrusted a valet with a letter to deliver, happened to look out of the window, and saw the man reading the message _en route_. Next day he despatched another letter to the same address by the same servant, taking care to append to it the following: 'P.S.--You may send a verbal answer by the bearer. He is perfectly acquainted with the whole affair, having taken the precaution to read this previous to delivery.'

On the whole, whether postscripts are defensible or not, it is clear that their history is eminently interesting. Some valuable matter has from time to time been put into them. There is at least one letter of Thomas Gray's, written in 1764 to the Rev. Norton Nicholls, the 'P.S.' of which is worth the whole of the remainder of the communication, so charming a bit of descriptive writing is embodied in it. Then, how full of good stuff are the epistolary addenda of Charles Lamb, with whom 'the cream of the correspondence' (as Tony Lumpkin has it) was very often rather in the postscript than in 'the inside of the letter,' in the sense of its larger portion. It is in one of these addenda that one finds the first record of a well-known sentence: 'Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly observes, has set in with its usual severity.' Elsewhere one comes across such tributes as: 'My friend Hood, a prime genius and hearty fellow, brings this.' Always characteristic in thought and in expression, Lamb was never more so than in the finales to his letters. 'I do not think your handwriting at all like ----'s,' he says to Southey; 'I do not think many things I did think.' He winds up a dog-Latin epistle to Bernard Barton, in 1831, with: 'P.S.--Perdita in toto est Billa Reformatura.' And to Coleridge he says, with delightful frankness:

'Write your German as plain as sunshine, for that must correct
itself. You know I am _homo unius linguae_: in English--illiterate,
a dunce, a ninny.'

Sometimes a postscript is unconsciously full of humour, as in the case of a note written by a certain Mr. O. to a recent Bishop of Norwich:

'Mr. O----'s private affairs turn out so sadly that he cannot have
the pleasure of waiting upon his lordship at his agreeable house on
Monday next.--N.B. His wife is dead.'

THE END.

_Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London._

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.

Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text.

The following misprint has been corrected:
"writting" corrected to "writing" (page 221)

Printer's inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation usage have been retained.

End of Project Gutenberg's By-ways in Book-land, by William Davenport Adams