One final judgment, however, might with due caution be hazarded.
I do not think that, on the whole, the English are quite as fond
of humour as we are. I mean they are not so willing to welcome at
all times the humorous point of view as we are in America. The
English are a serious people, with many serious things to think
of--football, horse racing, dogs, fish, and many other concerns
that demand much national thought: they have so many national
preoccupations of this kind that they have less need for jokes than
we have. They have higher things to talk about, whereas on our side
of the water, except when the World's Series is being played, we
have few, if any, truly national topics.

And yet I know that many people in England would exactly reverse this
last judgment and say that the Americans are a desperately serious
people. That in a sense is true. Any American who takes up with an
idea such as New Thought, Psychoanalysis or Eating Sawdust, or any
"uplift" of the kind becomes desperately lopsided in his seriousness,
and as a very large number of us cultivate New Thought, or practise
breathing exercises, or eat sawdust, no doubt the English visitors
think us a desperate lot.

Anyway, it's an ill business to criticise another people's
shortcomings. What I said at the start was that the British are
just as humorous as are the Americans, or the Canadians, or any of
us across the Atlantic, and for greater Certainty I repeat it at
the end.