Page:Letters from England.djvu/176

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BACK IN ENGLAND

What an English gentleman is cannot be stated concisely; you would have to be acquainted, firstly, with an English club-waiter, or with a booking-clerk at a railway station, or, above all, with a policeman. HairA gentleman, that is a measured combination of silence, courtesy, dignity, sport, newspapers and honesty. The man sitting opposite you in the train will anger you for two hours by not regarding you as worthy of a glance; suddenly he gets up and hands you your bag which you are unable to reach. Here the people always manage to help each other, but they never have anything to say to each other, except about the weather. That is

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