ur after time.
Not that I objected to that, as some lecturers are said to do; it seemed
to me an agreeable break in the monotony; but as a characteristic of a
people mostly engaged in practical business, it struck me as curious and
interesting. I have grown accustomed to being the most unbusinesslike
person in any given company; and it gave me a sort of dizzy exaltation
to find I was not the most unpunctual person in that company. I was
afterwards told by many Americans that my impression was quite correct;
that American unpunctuality was really very prevalent, and extended to
much more important things. But at least I was not content to lump this
along with all sorts of contrary things that I did not happen to like,
and call it America. I am not sure of what it really means, but I rather
fancy that though it may seem the very reverse of the hustling, it has
the same origin as the hustling. The American is not punctual because he
is not punctilious. He is impulsive, and has an impulse to stay as well
as an impulse to go. For, after all, punctuality belongs to the same
order of ideas as punctuation; and there is no punctuation in
telegrams. The order of clocks and set hours which English business has
always observed is a good thing in its own way; indeed I think that in a
larger sense it is better than the other way. But it is better because
it is a protection against hustling, not a promotion of it. In other
words, it is better because it is more civilised; as a great Venetian
merchant prince clad in cloth of gold was more civilised; or an old
English merchant drinking port in an oak-panelled room was more
civilised; or a little French shopkeeper shutting up his shop to play
dominoes is more civilised. And the reason is that the American has the
romance of business and is monomaniac, while the Frenchman has the
romance of life and is sane. But the romance of business really is a
romance, and the Americans are really romantic about it. And that
romance, though it revolves round pork or petrol, is really like a
love-affair in this; that it involves not only rushing but also
lingering.

The American is too busy to have business habits. He is also too much in
earnest to have business rules. If we wish to understand him, we must
compare him not with the French shopkeeper when he plays dominoes, but
with the same French shopkeeper when he works the guns or mans the
trenches as a conscript soldier. Everybody used to the puncti