Greenbrier independent. [volume] (Lewisburg, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1980, 1896-02-27
John Bull.

JoHu DUH Is tne largest la0uOWnel
on the face of the earth. And tha
recalls ret0rt of a witty friend o.
mine to whom All English friend
was boasting that the sun never sci
on British POSSESSIONS 'Ahu eX.
claimed my friend, 'the sun can't
trust the rasCals.'
In America, John Bull doesn't
own quite as much as he would like,
although he says to your people that
he isn't really trying to get any
more.
The nations Of the earth are each
of them fighting for different
thing. We Frenchmen fight for
glory, the Germans for a living, the
Russians to keep peoples eyes off
things at home, but the Englishman
II you listen to him, goes to war to
promote peace, to better the condi-
ton of mankind and help all of us
to perpetual happiness.
John Bull is a combination of
mule, lion and octopus. The three
: qualities that have made him are
tenaClty, the thickness of his skin
and what you call colloquially
'Cheek.'
/ Thomas Carlyle and Robert Louis
Stevenson are both of them called
ornaments to English literature. If
they had each committed q murder
they would have been called Scotch
men. That's little way the Eng
lish have. Burke, the greatest Eng
llSh orator, was an Irishman; so
was their greatest general, Yelling
ton; so is Lord Dufferin, their great
M ri ftNlx, :at
the Irish and Scotch from English
literature and there would be but
handful left.
In the singular, John Bull is a fell
low you can rely upon Implicitly
But take him in the plural-well, |
we'll call him a shrewd diplomotist.
There is only one country in the |
world who're they really have liberty.
That's England. They wouldn't
dream of giving their Queen one
tenth of the prerogatives of your
President. If prime minister
were to dare to send a message such |
as your President recently sent to |
Congress-mindy you, Pm not saving
he was right or wrong-if he were
to send such message at 2 O'Clock,
at O'Clock he would be kicked out
of office.
Notice the difference between the
boosters of different countries. The
Frenchman talks about France being
the light Of the world. He is noisy
In saying this, but you can see by
studying him that he's not more
than half sure he's tight. But the
Englishman is so thoroughly con-
Vinced of his own superiority that
1T doesn't seem necessary for him to
open his mouth to say so.
One thing that always impressed
me in travelling in Great Britain was
that every man, from prime minis
ter to railway porter was thoroughly
educated to the idea that he was the
servant of the people and not their
master.
There is something serio- comic,
something funny, something patri-
otic in an Englishman's use of the
word British. If he says an En-
glish woman, you can just be sure
that he is talking of every good and
noble quality in woman, but if he
calls her British maiden you can
be equally certain that there is some
thing ridiculous about her. And |
that is the way with every use of
the word.
Heaven, according to the people
of the Anglo-Saxon races, is a place
for Anglo-Saxon people.
Did you ever notice. the compla-
cency with which an Englishman
lets other people do things for him ?
| He has not word to say when
France builds Suez canal for his
use, he lets Italy send him her best
singers, and he's perfectly willing
that America should supply him
with heiresses for his arstocracy, to
gild coats of arms with the money
of men whose grandfathers posi-
bly, never had an arm to their coats.
Sixty years ago Sidney Smith said
that it would take surgical opera
tion to enable Scotchman to see
joke. Very likely it does, if the
joke be an English one. John Bull
has been repeating Smiths remark
until he fully believes it. That's the
way with him. He always holds on
to a joke after he has once heard
and seen-it.
The size of a Scotchman's feet
very likely accounts for the adOp-
tion of kits as national Dress
With such feet Sandy couldn't get
himself into pair of trousers.
You will always find that Scotch
man will keep the commandments,
keep the Sabbath and keep anything
generally that's worth keeping.
If you were to leave two English
men on one end of a desert island
for two years and two Scotchmen on
the other end, you would most likely
find on returning that the two Eng
lishmen had never said a word to
each other because they had not been
introduced, while the Scots had
promptly gotten together and formed
Caledonian society.
Wherever you find Englishmen on
the earth there will you find them
writing letters to the newspapers,
trying to take care Of everybody,
minding their neighbors' business,
talking about things that they don't
know anything about, and signing
themselves TRUTH Justice Wig
ilance,' or Pro Bono PublIco.' It's
a way they have.
A KILLARNEY tourist, so the
story goes, was assured by a guide
: that the echo on Loch Gill was worth
hearing. SO off went the tourist to
hear 1t, and hired two men to row