"
When it comes to descriptive new words, coined rapidly to meet
occasions, we English are nowhere compared with the Americans. Could
there be anything better than the term "Nearbeer" to reveal at a blow
the character of a substitute for ale? I take off my hat, too, to
"crape-hanger," which leaves "kill-joy" far in the rear. But "optience"
for a cinema audience, which sees but does not hear, though ingenious,
is less admirable.
Although I found the walls of business offices in New York and elsewhere
decorated with pithy counsel to callers, and discouragements to
irrelevance, such as "Come to the point but don't camp on it," "To hell
with yesterday," and so forth, I am very doubtful if with all these
suggestions of practical address and Napoleonic efficiency the American
business man is as quick and decisive as ours can be. There is more
autobiography talked in American offices than in English; more getting
ready to begin.
I have, however, no envy of the American man's inability to loaf and
invite his soul, as his great democratic poet was able to do. I think
that this unfamiliarity with armchair life is a misfortune. That article
of furniture, we must suppose, is for older civilisations, where men
have either, after earning the right to recline, taken their ease
gracefully, or have inherited their fortune and are partial to idleness.
It consorts ill with those who are still either continually and
restlessly in pursuit of the dollar or are engaged in the occupation of
watching dollars automatically arrive.
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