But on the whole the Englishman's home proves as high a standard of taste and good feeling as the twentieth century can offer. It is a fine reward for the work-doer, a fine fortress from which to issue forth to work. Let us now see England at play.
FOOTBALL AT RUGBY SCHOOL
CHAPTER VI
ENGLAND AT PLAY
"These English take their pleasures sadly," said a French wit. It was a misunderstanding of the national expression. The Englishman takes his pleasures not sadly but resolutely. It is a holiday. He is out to enjoy himself. He will enjoy himself whatever the obstacles. There is a grim resolve in his mind. But he is not sad: he is resolutely merry. That look on his face is not agony; it is stern determination.
I have seen Hampstead Heath on the midsummer Bank Holiday. A frowning sky, a bleak wind, and occasional gusty showers of rain declared the day to be not of midsummer and not suitable to open-air holiday. But the East End was not to be deterred from merriment. "London's playground" was like a huge ant-hill with swarming holiday-makers, and all had made up their dogged English minds to rejoice and be merry. That was apparent from the first.
In the "Tube" railways girls of from sixteen to sixty—all girly—giggled hilariously at everything and anything and nothing. "It's from the other side" announced one on the train platform; and this fact about the train's going was greeted with shouting laughter, and the "joke" went round a widening circle of rippling merriment. On the road, the coster's cart, loaded with Mr. and Mrs. Coster and a group of Costerlings—the numerousness of which said "no race suicide here"—scattered abroad song, vociferous if not tuneful. When a shower came the song grew louder, as though to smother the weather.