Punch's well-known lineaments remained the same. There was merely
a dab of palish yellow here and there on the sheet; at first glance
you might have supposed somebody else had been reading your copy
of Punch at breakfastand had been careless in spooning up his
soft-boiled egg.
They are our cousins, the English are; our cousins once removed,
'tis true--see standard histories of the American Revolution for
further details of the removing--but they are kinsmen of ours
beyond a doubt. Even if there were no other evidences, the kinship
between us would still be proved by the fact that the English are
the only people except the Americans who look on red meat--beef,
mutton, ham--as a food to be eaten for the taste of the meat itself;
whereas the other nations of the earth regard it as a vehicle for
carrying various sauces, dressings and stuffings southward to the
stomach. But, to the notice of the American who is paying them
his first visit, they certainly do offer some amazing contradictions.
In the large matters of business the English have been accused of
trickiness, which, however, may be but the voice of envious
competition speaking; but in the small things they surely are most
marvelously honest. Consider their railroad trains now: To a
greenhorn from this side the blue water, a railroad journey out
of London to almost any point in rural England is a succession of
surprises, and all pleasant ones.
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