“But the train goes at ten,” you say; “the station is a mile away, and it is now half-past nine.”
“Yes, but that means ten-twenty,” he answers, “you have nearly an hour.”
Five minutes later he taps you on the shoulder.
“My mistake, it’s twenty to ten. I was thinking it was the other way about.”
Another argues with him that his first idea was right. They work it out by scientific methods. Meanwhile you have dived into a cab. The result is always the same: you are either forty minutes too soon, or you have missed the train by twenty minutes. A Dutch platform is always crowded with women explaining volubly to their husbands either that there was not any need to have hurried, or else that the thing would have been to have started half an hour before they did, the man in both cases being, of course, to blame. The men walk up and down and swear.
The idea has been suggested that the railway time and the town time should be made to conform. The argument against the idea is that if it were carried out there would be nothing left to put the Dutchman out and worry him.
SHOULD WE SAY WHAT WE THINK, OR THINK WHAT WE SAY?
A mad friend of mine will have it that the characteristic of the age is Make-Believe. He argues that all social intercourse is founded on make-believe. A servant enters to say that Mr. and Mrs. Bore are in the drawing-room.
“Oh, damn!” says the man.
“Hush!” says the woman. “Shut the door, Susan. How often am I to tell you never to leave the door open?”