Three American Vices

Nearly right is not enough.

The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality and the desire for achievement and success.  They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.  American engineers in building bridges calculate so finely and exactly as to make the two ends come together within one tenth of an inch.  But when two Chinese being to dig a tunnel from both sides of a mountain, both come out on the other side.  Chinese conviction is that it doesn’t matter so long as tunnel is dug through, and if we have two instead of one, why, we have a double track to boot.  Provided you are not in a hurry, two tunnels are as good as one, dug somehow, and finished somehow and if the train gets through somehow.

Chinese are very punctual, provided you give them plenty of time to do a thing.  They always finish a thing on schedule, provided the schedule is long enough.

We love old cathedrals, old temples, old mosque, old furniture, old silver, old dictionaries and old prints, but we have entirely forgotten about the beauty of old men.  Appreciation of beauty of old men is essential to our life, for beauty, it seems to me, is what is old and mellow and well-smoked.