Steeped in Churchill

Of course, if I was longboarding in Westwood, I might say I was now "churched in steep hills." But that's another issue entirely...

Here's a fun excerpt from a short story by Churchill that went unpublished until some zealot of a historian managed to dig it out of the former PM's scrapbook:

His [the American] was not a character that turned to the pursuit of pleasure. All the energy of his vigorous father had descended to him. Unformulated ambitions impelled him to work. No 'sweated' labourer in his factories worked harder than did this master of millions. In other older lands he might have devoted the great talents he possessed to the service of the nation. He might have been a general or he might have been a statesman. But the American millionaire has no such outlets for his ambitions. . . . He cannot condescend to the army. . . . Still less will such colossi mingle in public life. . . . So there had been only one outlet for his tremendous energies—money making. And to money making he turned with unflagging assi­duity and unparalleled success.

That's Mr. C. What a flattering portrait of the US and A. Sounds not unlike an ancient describing the oligarch...hmmm, better Plato on the brain, the water, I guess.