Let no
stranger, however, experiment to prove the truth of this, for that
porter--and a porter is very like any other Englishman--is incapable of
taking the foreigner seriously and, quite friendly but a little pitying,
will lose him the train, assuring the unfortunate gentleman that he
really doesn't know what train he wants to catch--how should he?
The Englishman must have a thing brought under his nose before he will
act; bring it there and he will go on acting after everybody else has
stopped. He lives very much in the moment, because he is essentially a
man of facts and not a man of imagination. Want of imagination makes
him, philosophically speaking, rather ludicrous; in practical affairs it
handicaps him at the start, but once he has "got going," as we say, it
is of incalculable assistance to his stamina. The Englishman, partly
through this lack of imagination and nervous sensibility, partly through
his inbred dislike of extremes and habit of minimizing the expression of
everything, is a perfect example of the conservation of energy. It is
very difficult to come to the end of him. Add to this unimaginative,
practical, tenacious moderation an inherent spirit of competition--not
to say pugnacity--so strong that it will often show through the coating
of his "Live and let live," half-surly, half-good-humored manner; add a
peculiar, ironic, "don't care" sort of humor; an underground but
inveterate humaneness, and an ashamed idealism--and you get some notion
of the pudding of English character.
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