Whenever I Think Of
This Last God-Given Attribute Of The British Race, I Shall Recall
A Sunday We Spent At Brighton, The Favorite Seaside Resort Of
Middle-Class London.
Brighton was fairly bulging with excursionists
that day.
A good many of them were bucolic visitors from up country, but the
majority, it was plain to see, hailed from the city. No steam
carousel shrieked, no ballyhoo blared, no steam pianos shrieked,
no barker barked. Upon the piers, stretching out into the surf,
bands played soothingly softened airs and along the water front,
sand-artists and so-called minstrel singers plied their arts. Some
of the visitors fished - without catching anything - and some
listened to the music and some strolled aimlessly or sat stolidly
upon benches enjoying the sea air. To an American, accustomed at
such places to din and tumult and rushing crowds and dangerous
devices for taking one's breath and sometimes one's life, it was
a strange experience, but a mighty restful one.
On the other hand there are some things wherein we notably
excel - entirely too many for me to undertake to enumerate them
here; still, I think I might be pardoned for enumerating a conspicuous
few. We could teach Europe a lot about creature comforts and open
plumbing and personal cleanliness and good food and courtesy to
women - not the flashy, cheap courtesy which impels a Continental
to rise and click his heels and bend his person forward from the
abdomen and bow profoundly when a strange woman enters the railway
compartment where he is seated, while at the same time he leaves
his wife or sister to wrestle with the heavy luggage; but the
deeper, less showy instinct which makes the average American believe
that every woman is entitled to his protection and consideration
when she really needs it.
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