Explore "At large" by A.C. Benson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We Anglo-Saxons are mostly optimists at heart; we love to have things comfortable, and to pretend that they are comfortable when they obviously are not. The brisk Anglo-Saxon, if he cannot reach the grapes, does not say that the grapes are sour, but protests that he does not really care about grapes. A story is told of a great English proconsul who desired to get a loan from the Treasury of the Government over which he practically, though not nominally, presided. He went to the Financial Secretary and said: "Look here, T, you must get me a loan for a business I have very much at heart." The secretary whistled, and then said: "Well, I will try; but it is not the least use." "Oh, you will manage it somehow," said the proconsul, "and I may tell you confidentially it is absolutely essential." The following morning the secretary came to report: "I told you it was no use, sir, and it wasn't; the Board would not hear of it." "Damnation!" said the proconsul, and went on writing.
A week after he met the secretary, who felt a little shy. "By the way, T," said the great man, "I have been thinking over that matter of the loan, and it was a mercy you were not successful; it would have been a hopeless precedent, and we are much better without it."