ENGLISH EXCLUSIVENESS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7294, 6 January 1902, Page 2

ENGLISH EXCLUSIVENESS.

_ 4 _ A NATIONAL CHARACTERISTIC (By MAX O'RELL.) If you were to wreck two Englishmen at one end of some long outlandish island in the Pacific Ocean, and two Scotsmen at the other end, and you happened to pass that way again a few years afterward, you would discover that the two Englishmen had never spoken a word to each other, because they were not introduced, but you would find the two Scotsmen had started a Caledonian Society. Why does an Englishman always frown and generally look askance at everybody right and left when he enters the diningroom of a hotel? Why does he prefer travelling in a. single compartment to entering one of the Pullman cars now attached to almost all English trains? Why, on board a steamer, does he smoke, read books upside down, walk up and down the deck like a wild beast, all by himself? Simply because he does not like to eat or travel in the company of people who have not been introduced to him. At any rate, before he associates with you, this man, who, when you know him well, is the most charming, hospitable, and considerate of men, wants to know who you are, what you are, -what your father is, and what your grandfather was. Well, by the time all these enquiries are satisfactorily settled, the steamer has arrived, you have gone, and it is too late. And a journey which otherwise might have been a pleasant one to him, has bored him to death. In England, if the parents do not know each other, or have not been introduced, the children are not allowed to play sogether. Go to a railway station. In France, you will see a man alone go from one end of the train to the other in search of a carriage containing some pleasant, cheer-ful-looking person likely to enjoy, a chat with him on the way. The Frenchman cannot keep silent for long hours. Whether he travels or eats he likes to talk, and that is how his digestion is better than that of any other inhabitant of the globe. In England you will see a man alone go from one end of the train to the other, frowning at every carriage as he passes it, until he finds an empty one, and looks happy. He smiles and enters it. ( He spreads his belongings on the seats, settles down, and hopes to remain by himself the whole journey. I know of one exception only. When, in France, a man observes an attentive couple already settled by themselves in a compartment, he avoids them. He is full of human consideration. He says to himself, "If I were myself suffering from the same indisposition as this man, and had such a pleasant companion with me, I should like to be left alone. Dear couple ! I will respect their wish for solitude." And he keeps away. In England, I have often noticed some lonely old " cat," male or female, choose that carriage and make a point to enter it. Mere cussedness ! Through that constant fear of making the acquaintance of people he would not care to meet at home and have his wife meet, the Englishmen often misses Lis chance of a. pleasant time when he travels abroad or in England.* At seaside casinos, at health resorts and watering places, the French (perhaps not of the upper classes, who, I am sorry to say, rather suffer from a mild attack of Anglomania), will associate with people whom they would not perhaps care to know and visit at home, but who are only acquaintances for the time, people who help them to pa ss time pleasantly. When they leave the place they forget them, and are glad to have profited by associations which do not compel them to pay calls when they return home. The dullest places in the world are English seaside and health resorts. Every one keeps to himself. There are no casinos, because they would not pay; there is no intercourse whatever among the visitors; always that terrible veto to all pleasures— " We have not been introduced." __