I
seem to recall what happened once when a certain middleweight from
this side went over there and broke the British heart by licking
the British champion; and again what happened when a Yankee boy
won the Marathon at the Olympic games in London a few years ago.
But as this man was a Briton himself these other Britons harkened
to his sputterings, for England, you know, grants the right of
free speech to all Englishmen--and denies it to all Englishwomen.
The settled Englishman declines always to be jostled out of his
hereditary state of intense calm. They tell of a man who dashed
into the reading room of the Savage Club with the announcement
that a lion was loose on the Strand--a lion that had escaped from
a traveling caravan and was rushing madly to and fro, scaring
horses and frightening pedestrians.
"Great excitement! Most terrific, old dears--on my word!" he added,
addressing the company.
Over the top of the Pink Un an elderly gentleman of a full habit
of life regarded him sourly.
"Is that any reason," he inquired, "why a person should rush into
a gentleman's club and kick up such a deuced hullabaloo?"
The first man--he must have been a Colonial--gazed at the other
man in amazement.
"Well," he asked, "what would you do if you met a savage lion loose
on the Strand?"
"Sir, I should take a cab!"
And after meeting an Englishman or two of this type I am quite
prepared to say the story might have been a true one.
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