Pinch me, I must be dreaming

SUCH IS THE phlegmatic and broadly optimistic temperament of the British people that if you write an article that the world is going to the dogs, your friends at once rally round and clap you on the back, saying, ‘Come come, old fellow; it's not as bad as that; cheer up, do!’; and Abraham Silence, being further away, writes down the same message and sends it to you. And that's the end of it, because even if the world is going to the dogs, nobody really wants to know about it until it's happened, and, please God they think, perhaps it won't happen anyway, or not yet awhile, at least.