One might end this little train of thought by considering a converse
test of what the eye-opener is in travel; and that test is to talk to
foreigners when they first come to England and see how they tend to
discover in England what they have read of at home instead of what they
really see. There have been very few fogs in London of late, but your
foreigner nearly always finds London foggy. Kent does not show along its
main railway line the evidence of agricultural depression: it is like a
garden. Yet, in a very careful and thorough French book just published
by a French traveller, his bird's-eye view of the country as he went
through Kent just after landing would make you think the place a desert;
he seems to have thought the hedges a sign of agricultural decay. The
same foreigner will discover a plebeian character in the Commons and an
aristocratic one in the House of Lords, though he shall have heard but
four speeches in each, and though every one of the eight speeches shall
have been delivered by members of one family group closely intermarried,
wealthy, titled, and perhaps (who knows?) of some lineage as well.

The moral is that one should tell the truth to oneself, and look out for
it outside one. It is quite as novel and as entertaining as the
discovery of the North Pole--or, in case that has come off (as some
believe), the discovery of the South Pole.




The Public


I notice a very curious thing in the actions particularly of business
men to-day, and of other men also, which is the projection outward from