magazine of thoughts in his head. He spoke almost exactly twice as fast
as Mr. Direck, clipping his words much more, using much compacter
sentences, and generally cutting his corners, and this put Mr. Direck
off his game.

That rapid attack while the transatlantic interlocutor is deploying is
indeed a not infrequent defect of conversations between Englishmen and
Americans. It is a source of many misunderstandings. The two conceptions
of conversation differ fundamentally. The English are much less disposed
to listen than the American; they have not quite the same sense of
conversational give and take, and at first they are apt to reduce their
visitors to the rôle of auditors wondering when their turn will begin.
Their turn never does begin. Mr. Direck sat deeply in his slanting seat
with a half face to his celebrated host and said "Yep" and "Sure" and
"That _is_ so," in the dry grave tones that he believed an Englishman
would naturally expect him to use, realising this only very gradually.

Mr. Britling, from his praise of the enterprise that had at last brought
a car he could drive within his reach, went on to that favourite topic
of all intelligent Englishmen, the adverse criticism of things British.
He pointed out that the central position of the brake and gear levers in
his automobile made it extremely easy for the American manufacturer to
turn it out either as a left-handed or a right-handed car, and so adapt
it either to the Continental or to the British rule of the road. No
English cars were so adaptable. We British suffered much from our
insular rule of the road, just as we suffered much from our insular
weights and measures. But we took a perverse pride in such
disadvantages. The irruption of American cars into England was a recent
phenomenon, it was another triumph for the tremendous organising ability
of the American mind. They were doing with the automobile what they had