A Diversity of Creatures

by Rudyard Kipling

'Don't these folk,' she said a little later, 'remind you of Arabs picnicking under the Pyramids?'

'I've never seen the Pyramids,' I replied.

'Hm! I didn't know you were as English as all that.' And when I laughed, 'Are you?'

'Always. It saves trouble.'

'Now that's just what I find so significant among the English'--this was Alice's mother, I think, with one elbow well forward among the salted almonds. 'Oh, I know how you feel, Madam Burton, but a Northerner like myself--I'm Buffalo--even though we come over every year--notices the desire for comfort in England. There's so little conflict or uplift in British society.'

'But we like being comfortable,' I said.

'I know it. It's very characteristic. But ain't it a little, just a little, lacking in adaptability an' imagination?'

'They haven't any need for adaptability,' Madam Burton struck in. 'They haven't any Ellis Island standards to live up to.'

'But we can assimilate,' the Buffalo woman charged on.

'Now you have done it!' I whispered to the old lady as the blessed word 'assimilation' woke up all the old arguments for and against.