In Crossing From Dover To Calais We Had Thought We Should Be Going
Merely From One Country To Another; We Found We Had Gone From One
World To Another.
That narrow strip of uneasy water does not
separate two countries - it separates two planets.
Gone were the incredible stiffness and the incurable honesty of
the race that belonged over yonder on those white chalk cliffs
dimly visible along the horizon. Gone were the phlegm and stolidity
of those people who manifest emotion only on the occasions when
they stand up to sing their national anthem:
God save the King!
The Queen is doing well!
Gone were the green fields of Sussex, which looked as though they
had been taken in every night and brushed and dry-cleaned and then
put down again in the morning. Gone were the trees that Maxfield
Parrish might have painted, so vivid were they in their burnished
green-and-yellow coloring, so spectacular in their grouping.
Gone was the five-franc note which I had intrusted to a sandwich
vender on the railroad platform in the vain hope that he would
come back with the change. After that clincher there was no doubt
about it - we were in La Belle France all right, all right!
Everything testified to the change. From the pier where we landed,
a small boy, in a long black tunic belted in at his waist, was
fishing; he hooked a little fingerling. At the first tentative
tug on his line he set up a shrill clamor.
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