Otherwise Your
Britisher Does Not Bother Himself With What The Outlander May Or
May Not Do.
An Englishman cannot understand an American's instinctive desire
to know about things; we do not understand his lack of curiosity
in that direction.
Both of us forget what I think must be the
underlying reasons - that we are a race which, until comparatively
recently, lived wide distances apart in sparsely settled lands,
and were dependent on the passing stranger for news of the rest
of the world, where he belongs to a people who all these centuries
have been packed together in their little island like oats in a
bin. London itself is so crowded that the noses of most of the
lower classes turn up - there is not room for them to point straight
ahead without causing a great and bitter confusion of noses; but
whether it points upward or outward or downward the owner of the
nose pretty generally refrains from ramming it into other folks'
business. If he and all his fellows did not do this; if they had
not learned to keep their voices down and to muffle unnecessary
noises; if they had not built tight covers of reserve about
themselves, as the oyster builds a shell to protect his tender
tissues from irritation - they would long ago have become a race
of nervous wrecks instead of being what they are, the most stolid
beings alive.
In London even royalty is mercifully vouchsafed a reasonable amount
of privacy from the intrusion of the gimlet eye and the chisel
nose.
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