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Updated: May 7, 2025
We misunderstand all this, and go on to suppose that there are the same grounds why we should in our own minds acquiesce in second-best opinions; why we should mix a little alloy of conventional expression with the too fine ore of conviction; why we should adopt beliefs that we suspect in our hearts to be of more than equivocal authenticity, but into whose antecedents we do not greatly care to inquire, because they stand so well with the general public.
There is no record of his talk at the Mermaid, the Falcon, or the Apollo saloon to make readers doubtful whether his printed utterances truly represent him. Would that the will had been destroyed! then there would have been no talk about the “second-best bed” and the like insane gabble. Suppose, by ill chance, a batch of his letters to Anna Hathaway had been preserved.
She made Charles feel as if he brought in dirt by the bushel, and scattered it about in pure spite. She even refused his help in clearing away the dishes; and she tried to make him wear his second-best clothes that eventful evening. Oh, what an evening it was! The hall was crowded. The stage was full of children, one tier of seats rising above another.
We misunderstand the considerations which should rightly lead us in practice to surrender some of what we desire, in order to secure the rest; and rightly make us acquiesce in a second-best course of action, in order to avoid stagnation or retrogression.
Henry James, delineating a fictitious writer clearly intended to be the ideal of an artist, makes him regret that he has sometimes allowed himself to take the second-best word instead of searching for the best. Theoretically, of course, one ought always to try for the best word.
If you think it does, you do so at your own risk. I thought it did, and escaped by the skin of my teeth. I hinted my views, and found myself in a den of lions, and was thankful to come out second-best. Second? nay, third-best, fourth-best, no best at all, not even good, very bad. In short, I was glad to get out with my life. Nor was my repulse confined to the passing hour.
James's one Sunday with two gores on each side, that Miss Chickie regretfully put scissors into her first breadth. Each matronly member of good society possessed a substantial silk gown of some sober color, which gown, having done duty at two years' tea-parties, descended to the grade of "second-best," and so descended, year by year, until it disappeared into the dim distance of the past.
If you come to the second-best results, to the gold so alloyed that you may confidently stamp it your own, do you wish to proclaim it the precious metal without alloy? Do you wish to declare that it is to all intents and purposes quite as good as pure gold, or even better?
I want to know what startled Heaver yonder, what you have come to say." "I beg pardon, your grace. One doesn't keep good news waiting, and 'tis not good news for her ladyship I bring, even if it be for Claridge Pasha, for there was no love lost 'twixt him and second-best lordship that's gone." "Speak, man, speak it out, and no more riddles," she interrupted sharply.
The lieutenant of the sharpshooters now had fifty-six men in his company. When Captain Gordon called at the prison, he promoted Ripley to the rank of captain, and made Butters, who was the second-best shot in the corps, lieutenant, though he could not give them commissions.
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