When, by a chance
indefinitely rarer than it is with us at home, one meets an
Irishman in England, or better still an Irishwoman, there is an
instant lift of the spirit; and, when one passes the Scotch
border, there is so much lift that, on returning, one sinks back
into the embrace of the English temperament, with a sigh for the
comfort of its soft unhurried expectation that there is really
something in what you say which, will be clear by-and-by.
Having said so much as this in compliance with the frequent
American pretence that the English are without humor, I wish to
hedge in the interest of truth. They certainly are not so
constantly joking as we; it does not apparently seem to them that
fate can be propitiated by a habit of pleasantry, or that this is
so merry a world that one need go about grinning in it. Perhaps
the conditions with most of them are harder than the conditions
with most of us. But, thinking of certain Englishmen I have
known, I should be ashamed to join in the cry of those story-
telling Americans whose jokes have sometimes fallen effectless.
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