topical, more idealising. It is broader, in fact, because it has two experiences of life, and depends less upon the daily papers.
The children of these countrymen are quite different. The power of generalisation has left them altogether, with their town breeding; their conversation is a collection of town topics, their allusions are gathered from the interests of daily papers, they have international nicknames for the food in cheap eating houses and for common objects.—Thus whiskers become "Krugers"; slices of German sausage are "Kaiser's telegrams"; macaroni is called "A. J. B."—out of a fancied resemblance to the entwined legs of the Prime Minister of a certain epoch. Thus for the Londoner the "facts" of the daily and weekly press take the place of any broad generalisations upon life.
It takes, too, for at least the poorer classes, the place of animal "fancies"; it dictates, the daily and weekly press, their very hobbies. For to a man with an individuality—and the countryman has a strong and knotted one as a rule—his hobby is his mental anodyne. To the real Londoner the press is that. You get the distinction strongly in this way. My Lincolnshire waggoner become a soapmaker's hand, has his bit of cold steak wrapped up in a fragment of newspaper six weeks old. At lunch time he spells out from this, laboriously, a report of the trial of a solicitor for embezzling £40,000. He says slowly: "Well, well: why do the Law always breed rogues and ruin fools?"
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