ught not to pit
themselves against the unhappy prisoner.

Why not take a man of their own size? For true amusement Mr. Charles
Chaplin or Mr. Leslie Henson could give them sixty in a hundred. I even
think I could myself.

One final judgment, however, might with due caution be hazarded. I do
not think that, on the whole, the English are quite as fond of humour
as we are. I mean they are not so willing to welcome at all times the
humorous point of view as we are in America. The English are a serious
people, with many serious things to think of--football, horse racing,
dogs, fish, and many other concerns that demand much national thought:
they have so many national preoccupations of this kind that they have
less need for jokes than we have. They have higher things to talk about,
whereas on our side of the water, except when the World's Series is
being played, we have few, if any, truly national topics.

And yet I know that many people in England would exactly reverse this
last judgment and say that the Americans are a desperately serious
people. That in a sense is true. Any American who takes up with an idea
such as New Thought, Psychoanalysis or Eating Sawdust, or any "uplift"
of the kind becomes desperately lopsided in his seriousness, and as a
very large number of us cultivate New Thought, or practise breathing
exercises, or eat sawdust, no doubt the English visitors think us a
desperate lot.

Anyway, it's an ill business to criticise another people's shortcomings.
What I said at the start was that the British are just as humorous as
are the Americans, or the Canadians, or any of us across the Atlantic,
and for greater Certainty I repeat it at the end.

End of Project Gutenberg's My Discovery of England, by Stephen Leacock

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