E-Book - Three Men in a Boat

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome - Summary & Book Index

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About - Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.

The book was intended initially to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history of places along the route, but the humorous elements eventually took over, to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages now seem like an unnecessary distraction to the essentially comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers. The jokes seem fresh and witty even today.

The three men were based on the narrator (Jerome himself) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who went on to become a senior manager in Barclays Bank) and Harris (in reality Carl Hentschel, the founder of a well-known London printing business). The dog, Montmorency, was entirely fictional, but as Jerome had remarked, "had much of me in it." The holiday was a typical boating holiday of the time, carried out in a Thames Camping Skiff. This was just after commercial boat traffic on the Upper Thames had died out, to be replaced by the 1880's craze for boating as a leisure activity.

There was a less successful sequel, about a cycling tour in Germany, entitled Three Men on the Bummel.

A similar book was published seven years before Jerome's work, entitled Three in Norway (by two of them) by J. A. Lees and W. J. Clutterbuck. It tells the story of three men on an expedition into the wild Jotunheimen in Norway. The similarities between the two books are striking.

Plot Summary

The story beings by introducing the main characters - George, Harris, 'J' (Jerome, the narrator) and Montmorency, the dog. The men are spending an evening in J's room, smoking and idly discussing various illnesses they fancy they are suffering from. They conclude they are suffering from 'overwork' and are badly in need of a holiday. The options of a stay in the country and a sea-trip are considered, then rejected (J. describes the bad experiences had by his brother-in-law and another unnamed friend on sea-trips). The three eventually decide upon a boating trip up the Thames during which they'll camp-out, notwithstanding more anecdotes from J. regarding previous mishaps with tents and camping stoves.

The next Saturday, they embark. George must go into work that morning ("George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two") so J. and Harris make their way to Kingston by train. Unable to find the correct train at Waterloo Station, they resort to bribing a train driver to take his train to Kingston where they collect their hired boat and start upon their journey. They meet George later in the day, up-river at Weybridge.

The remainder of the story relates their leisurely journey up the river and the incidents that occur. The book's original purpose as a guidebook is apparent as the narrator describes the many landmarks and villages they pass by such as Hampton Court Palace, Monkey Island, Magna Carta Island and Marlow, and he muses upon the historical associations of these places. However, he frequently digresses into funny anecdotes that range in subject from the unreliability of barometers for weather forecasting to Harris' hopeless ineptness at singing Gilbert and Sullivan comic songs (that contrasts with his belief that he has a talent for it). The most frequent topics are river pastimes such as fishing and boating and the difficulties they may present to the unwary.

The book includes several classic comic set-pieces, such as the plaster of Paris trout in chapter seventeen and the "Irish stew" in chapter fourteen - made by mixing together most of the leftover items in the party's food hamper.

" I forget the other ingredients, but I know nothing was wasted; and I remember that, towards the end, Montmorency, who had evinced great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest and thoughtful air, reappearing, a few minutes afterwards, with a dead water-rat in his mouth, which he evidently wished to present as his contribution to the dinner; whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a genuine desire to assist, I cannot say. "

Book Index

CHAPTER I.

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CHAPTER I.

THREE INVALIDS. - SUFFERINGS OF GEORGE AND HARRIS. - A VICTIM TO ONE

HUNDRED AND SEVEN FATAL MALADIES. - USEFUL PRESCRIPTIONS. - CURE FOR

LIVER COMPLAINT IN CHILDREN. - WE AGREE THAT WE ARE OVERWORKED, AND NEED

REST. - A WEEK ON THE ROLLING DEEP? - GEORGE SUGGESTS THE RIVER. -

MONTMORENCY LODGES AN OBJECTION. - ORIGINAL MOTION CARRIED BY MAJORITY OF

THREE TO ONE.

THERE were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself,

and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about

how bad we were - bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.

We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it.

Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at

times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said that

HE had fits of giddiness too, and hardly knew what HE was doing. With

me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that

was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liver-pill

circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man

could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine

advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am

suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most

virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly

with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment

for some slight ailment of which I had a touch - hay fever, I fancy it

was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an

unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently

study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I

plunged into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I

had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in

upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of

despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever - read

the symptoms - discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for

months without knowing it - wondered what else I had got; turned up St.

Vitus's Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too, - began to get

interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so

started alphabetically - read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening

for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another

fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a

modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years.

Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have

been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six

letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was

housemaid's knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of

slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious

reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I

reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I

grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout,

in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my

being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from

boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there

was nothing else the matter with me.

I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a

medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class!

Students would have no need to "walk the hospitals," if they had me. I

was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me,

and, after that, take their diploma.

Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I

felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of

a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I

made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my

heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since

been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the

time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted

myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I

went a bit round each side, and a little way up the back. But I could

not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out

as far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it

with the other. I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I

could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had

scarlet fever.

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out

a decrepit wreck.

I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse,

and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing,

when I fancy I'm ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to

him now. "What a doctor wants," I said, "is practice. He shall have me.

He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your

ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each." So

I went straight up and saw him, and he said:

"Well, what's the matter with you?"

I said:

"I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the

matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had

finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have

not got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot

tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else,

however, I HAVE got."

And I told him how I came to discover it all.

Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and

then he hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it - a cowardly

thing to do, I call it - and immediately afterwards butted me with the

side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription,

and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.

I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's, and handed it in.

The man read it, and then handed it back.

He said he didn't keep it.

I said:

"You are a chemist?"

He said:

"I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel

combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers

me."

I read the prescription. It ran:

"1 lb. beefsteak, with

1 pt. bitter beer

every 6 hours.

1 ten-mile walk every morning.

1 bed at 11 sharp every night.

And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand."

I followed the directions, with the happy result - speaking for myself -

that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

In the present instance, going back to the liver-pill circular, I had the

symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a general

disinclination to work of any kind."

What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I

have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for

a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science

was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down

to laziness.

"Why, you skulking little devil, you," they would say, "get up and do

something for your living, can't you?" - not knowing, of course, that I

was ill.

And they didn't give me pills; they gave me clumps on the side of the

head. And, strange as it may appear, those clumps on the head often

cured me - for the time being. I have known one clump on the head have

more effect upon my liver, and make me feel more anxious to go straight

away then and there, and do what was wanted to be done, without further

loss of time, than a whole box of pills does now.

You know, it often is so - those simple, old-fashioned remedies are

sometimes more efficacious than all the dispensary stuff.

We sat there for half-an-hour, describing to each other our maladies. I

explained to George and William Harris how I felt when I got up in the

morning, and William Harris told us how he felt when he went to bed; and

George stood on the hearth-rug, and gave us a clever and powerful piece

of acting, illustrative of how he felt in the night.

George FANCIES he is ill; but there's never anything really the matter

with him, you know.

At this point, Mrs. Poppets knocked at the door to know if we were ready

for supper. We smiled sadly at one another, and said we supposed we had

better try to swallow a bit. Harris said a little something in one's

stomach often kept the disease in check; and Mrs. Poppets brought the

tray in, and we drew up to the table, and toyed with a little steak and

onions, and some rhubarb tart.

I must have been very weak at the time; because I know, after the first

half-hour or so, I seemed to take no interest whatever in my food - an

unusual thing for me - and I didn't want any cheese.

This duty done, we refilled our glasses, lit our pipes, and resumed the

discussion upon our state of health. What it was that was actually the

matter with us, we none of us could be sure of; but the unanimous opinion

was that it - whatever it was - had been brought on by overwork.

"What we want is rest," said Harris.

"Rest and a complete change," said George. "The overstrain upon our

brains has produced a general depression throughout the system. Change

of scene, and absence of the necessity for thought, will restore the

mental equilibrium."

George has a cousin, who is usually described in the charge-sheet as a

medical student, so that he naturally has a somewhat family-physicianary

way of putting things.

I agreed with George, and suggested that we should seek out some retired

and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream away a sunny

week among its drowsy lanes - some half-forgotten nook, hidden away by

the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world - some quaint-perched eyrie

on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth

century would sound far-off and faint.

Harris said he thought it would be humpy. He said he knew the sort of

place I meant; where everybody went to bed at eight o'clock, and you

couldn't get a REFEREE for love or money, and had to walk ten miles to

get your baccy.

"No," said Harris, "if you want rest and change, you can't beat a sea

trip."

I objected to the sea trip strongly. A sea trip does you good when you

are going to have a couple of months of it, but, for a week, it is

wicked.

You start on Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are

going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on shore,

light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were

Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus all rolled into

one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and

Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a

little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer with a wan, sweet

smile when kind-hearted people ask you how you feel now. On Sunday, you

begin to walk about again, and take solid food. And on Monday morning,

as, with your bag and umbrella in your hand, you stand by the gunwale,

waiting to step ashore, you begin to thoroughly like it.

I remember my brother-in-law going for a short sea trip once, for the

benefit of his health. He took a return berth from London to Liverpool;

and when he got to Liverpool, the only thing he was anxious about was to

sell that return ticket.

It was offered round the town at a tremendous reduction, so I am told;

and was eventually sold for eighteenpence to a bilious-looking youth who

had just been advised by his medical men to go to the sea-side, and take

exercise.

"Sea-side!" said my brother-in-law, pressing the ticket affectionately

into his hand; "why, you'll have enough to last you a lifetime; and as

for exercise! why, you'll get more exercise, sitting down on that ship,

than you would turning somersaults on dry land."

He himself - my brother-in-law - came back by train. He said the North-

Western Railway was healthy enough for him.

Another fellow I knew went for a week's voyage round the coast, and,

before they started, the steward came to him to ask whether he would pay

for each meal as he had it, or arrange beforehand for the whole series.

The steward recommended the latter course, as it would come so much

cheaper. He said they would do him for the whole week at two pounds

five. He said for breakfast there would be fish, followed by a grill.

Lunch was at one, and consisted of four courses. Dinner at six - soup,

fish, entree, joint, poultry, salad, sweets, cheese, and dessert. And a

light meat supper at ten.

My friend thought he would close on the two-pound-five job (he is a

hearty eater), and did so.

Lunch came just as they were off Sheerness. He didn't feel so hungry as

he thought he should, and so contented himself with a bit of boiled beef,

and some strawberries and cream. He pondered a good deal during the

afternoon, and at one time it seemed to him that he had been eating

nothing but boiled beef for weeks, and at other times it seemed that he

must have been living on strawberries and cream for years.

Neither the beef nor the strawberries and cream seemed happy, either -

seemed discontented like.

At six, they came and told him dinner was ready. The announcement

aroused no enthusiasm within him, but he felt that there was some of that

two-pound-five to be worked off, and he held on to ropes and things and

went down. A pleasant odour of onions and hot ham, mingled with fried

fish and greens, greeted him at the bottom of the ladder; and then the

steward came up with an oily smile, and said:

"What can I get you, sir?"

"Get me out of this," was the feeble reply.

And they ran him up quick, and propped him up, over to leeward, and left

him.

For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin

captain's biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain)

and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he got uppish, and went in for

weak tea and dry toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on chicken

broth. He left the ship on Tuesday, and as it steamed away from the

landing-stage he gazed after it regretfully.

"There she goes," he said, "there she goes, with two pounds' worth of

food on board that belongs to me, and that I haven't had."

He said that if they had given him another day he thought he could have

put it straight.

So I set my face against the sea trip. Not, as I explained, upon my own

account. I was never queer. But I was afraid for George. George said

he should be all right, and would rather like it, but he would advise

Harris and me not to think of it, as he felt sure we should both be ill.

Harris said that, to himself, it was always a mystery how people managed

to get sick at sea - said he thought people must do it on purpose, from

affectation - said he had often wished to be, but had never been able.

Then he told us anecdotes of how he had gone across the Channel when it

was so rough that the passengers had to be tied into their berths, and he

and the captain were the only two living souls on board who were not ill.

Sometimes it was he and the second mate who were not ill; but it was

generally he and one other man. If not he and another man, then it was

he by himself.

It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you

come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them;

but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was

to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that

swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.

If most men were like a fellow I saw on the Yarmouth boat one day, I

could account for the seeming enigma easily enough. It was just off

Southend Pier, I recollect, and he was leaning out through one of the

port-holes in a very dangerous position. I went up to him to try and

save him.

"Hi! come further in," I said, shaking him by the shoulder. "You'll be

overboard."

"Oh my! I wish I was," was the only answer I could get; and there I had

to leave him.

Three weeks afterwards, I met him in the coffee-room of a Bath hotel,

talking about his voyages, and explaining, with enthusiasm, how he loved

the sea.

"Good sailor!" he replied in answer to a mild young man's envious query;

"well, I did feel a little queer ONCE, I confess. It was off Cape Horn.

The vessel was wrecked the next morning."

I said:

"Weren't you a little shaky by Southend Pier one day, and wanted to be

thrown overboard?"

"Southend Pier!" he replied, with a puzzled expression.

"Yes; going down to Yarmouth, last Friday three weeks."

"Oh, ah - yes," he answered, brightening up; "I remember now. I did have

a headache that afternoon. It was the pickles, you know. They were the

most disgraceful pickles I ever tasted in a respectable boat. Did you

have any?"

For myself, I have discovered an excellent preventive against sea-

sickness, in balancing myself. You stand in the centre of the deck, and,

as the ship heaves and pitches, you move your body about, so as to keep

it always straight. When the front of the ship rises, you lean forward,

till the deck almost touches your nose; and when its back end gets up,

you lean backwards. This is all very well for an hour or two; but you

can't balance yourself for a week.

George said:

"Let's go up the river."

He said we should have fresh air, exercise and quiet; the constant change

of scene would occupy our minds (including what there was of Harris's);

and the hard work would give us a good appetite, and make us sleep well.

Harris said he didn't think George ought to do anything that would have a

tendency to make him sleepier than he always was, as it might be

dangerous.

He said he didn't very well understand how George was going to sleep any

more than he did now, seeing that there were only twenty-four hours in

each day, summer and winter alike; but thought that if he DID sleep any

more, he might just as well be dead, and so save his board and lodging.

Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a "T." I don't

know what a "T" is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and-

butter and cake AD LIB., and is cheap at the price, if you haven't had

any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to

its credit.

It suited me to a "T" too, and Harris and I both said it was a good idea

of George's; and we said it in a tone that seemed to somehow imply that

we were surprised that George should have come out so sensible.

The only one who was not struck with the suggestion was Montmorency. He

never did care for the river, did Montmorency.

"It's all very well for you fellows," he says; "you like it, but I don't.

There's nothing for me to do. Scenery is not in my line, and I don't

smoke. If I see a rat, you won't stop; and if I go to sleep, you get

fooling about with the boat, and slop me overboard. If you ask me, I

call the whole thing bally foolishness."

We were three to one, however, and the motion was carried.

CHAPTER II.

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CHAPTER II.

PLANS DISCUSSED. - PLEASURES OF "CAMPING-OUT," ON FINE NIGHTS. - DITTO,

WET NIGHTS. - COMPROMISE DECIDED ON. - MONTMORENCY, FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF.

- FEARS LEST HE IS TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD, FEARS SUBSEQUENTLY DISMISSED

AS GROUNDLESS. - MEETING ADJOURNS.

WE pulled out the maps, and discussed plans.

We arranged to start on the following Saturday from Kingston. Harris and

I would go down in the morning, and take the boat up to Chertsey, and

George, who would not be able to get away from the City till the

afternoon (George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day,

except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two),

would meet us there.

Should we "camp out" or sleep at inns?

George and I were for camping out. We said it would be so wild and free,

so patriarchal like.

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the

cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased

their song, and only the moorhen's plaintive cry and the harsh croak of

the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the

dying day breathes out her last.

From the dim woods on either bank, Night's ghostly army, the grey

shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear-

guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the

waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her

sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from

her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness.

Then we run our little boat into some quiet nook, and the tent is

pitched, and the frugal supper cooked and eaten. Then the big pipes are

filled and lighted, and the pleasant chat goes round in musical

undertone; while, in the pauses of our talk, the river, playing round the

boat, prattles strange old tales and secrets, sings low the old child's

song that it has sung so many thousand years - will sing so many thousand

years to come, before its voice grows harsh and old - a song that we, who

have learnt to love its changing face, who have so often nestled on its

yielding bosom, think, somehow, we understand, though we could not tell

you in mere words the story that we listen to.

And we sit there, by its margin, while the moon, who loves it too, stoops

down to kiss it with a sister's kiss, and throws her silver arms around

it clingingly; and we watch it as it flows, ever singing, ever

whispering, out to meet its king, the sea - till our voices die away in

silence, and the pipes go out - till we, common-place, everyday young men

enough, feel strangely full of thoughts, half sad, half sweet, and do not

care or want to speak - till we laugh, and, rising, knock the ashes from

our burnt-out pipes, and say "Good-night," and, lulled by the lapping

water and the rustling trees, we fall asleep beneath the great, still

stars, and dream that the world is young again - young and sweet as she

used to be ere the centuries of fret and care had furrowed her fair face,

ere her children's sins and follies had made old her loving heart - sweet

as she was in those bygone days when, a new-made mother, she nursed us,

her children, upon her own deep breast - ere the wiles of painted

civilization had lured us away from her fond arms, and the poisoned

sneers of artificiality had made us ashamed of the simple life we led

with her, and the simple, stately home where mankind was born so many

thousands years ago.

Harris said:

"How about when it rained?"

You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry about Harris - no wild

yearning for the unattainable. Harris never "weeps, he knows not why."

If Harris's eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has

been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester over his chop.

If you were to stand at night by the sea-shore with Harris, and say:

"Hark! do you not hear? Is it but the mermaids singing deep below the

waving waters; or sad spirits, chanting dirges for white corpses, held by

seaweed?" Harris would take you by the arm, and say:

"I know what it is, old man; you've got a chill. Now, you come along

with me. I know a place round the corner here, where you can get a drop

of the finest Scotch whisky you ever tasted - put you right in less than

no time."

Harris always does know a place round the corner where you can get

something brilliant in the drinking line. I believe that if you met

Harris up in Paradise (supposing such a thing likely), he would

immediately greet you with:

"So glad you've come, old fellow; I've found a nice place round the

corner here, where you can get some really first-class nectar."

In the present instance, however, as regarded the camping out, his

practical view of the matter came as a very timely hint. Camping out in

rainy weather is not pleasant.

It is evening. You are wet through, and there is a good two inches of

water in the boat, and all the things are damp. You find a place on the

banks that is not quite so puddly as other places you have seen, and you

land and lug out the tent, and two of you proceed to fix it.

It is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles down on you, and

clings round your head and makes you mad. The rain is pouring steadily

down all the time. It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather:

in wet, the task becomes herculean. Instead of helping you, it seems to

you that the other man is simply playing the fool. Just as you get your

side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end, and spoils it

all.

"Here! what are you up to?" you call out.

"What are YOU up to?" he retorts; "leggo, can't you?"

"Don't pull it; you've got it all wrong, you stupid ass!" you shout.

"No, I haven't," he yells back; "let go your side!"

"I tell you you've got it all wrong!" you roar, wishing that you could

get at him; and you give your ropes a lug that pulls all his pegs out.

"Ah, the bally idiot!" you hear him mutter to himself; and then comes a

savage haul, and away goes your side. You lay down the mallet and start

to go round and tell him what you think about the whole business, and, at

the same time, he starts round in the same direction to come and explain

his views to you. And you follow each other round and round, swearing at

one another, until the tent tumbles down in a heap, and leaves you

looking at each other across its ruins, when you both indignantly

exclaim, in the same breath:

"There you are! what did I tell you?"

Meanwhile the third man, who has been baling out the boat, and who has

spilled the water down his sleeve, and has been cursing away to himself

steadily for the last ten minutes, wants to know what the thundering

blazes you're playing at, and why the blarmed tent isn't up yet.

At last, somehow or other, it does get up, and you land the things. It

is hopeless attempting to make a wood fire, so you light the methylated

spirit stove, and crowd round that.

Rainwater is the chief article of diet at supper. The bread is two-

thirds rainwater, the beefsteak-pie is exceedingly rich in it, and the

jam, and the butter, and the salt, and the coffee have all combined with

it to make soup.

After supper, you find your tobacco is damp, and you cannot smoke.

Luckily you have a bottle of the stuff that cheers and inebriates, if

taken in proper quantity, and this restores to you sufficient interest in

life to induce you to go to bed.

There you dream that an elephant has suddenly sat down on your chest, and

that the volcano has exploded and thrown you down to the bottom of the

sea - the elephant still sleeping peacefully on your bosom. You wake up

and grasp the idea that something terrible really has happened. Your

first impression is that the end of the world has come; and then you

think that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers, or else

fire, and this opinion you express in the usual method. No help comes,

however, and all you know is that thousands of people are kicking you,

and you are being smothered.

Somebody else seems in trouble, too. You can hear his faint cries coming

from underneath your bed. Determining, at all events, to sell your life

dearly, you struggle frantically, hitting out right and left with arms

and legs, and yelling lustily the while, and at last something gives way,

and you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, you dimly observe

a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, and you are preparing for a

life-and-death struggle with him, when it begins to dawn upon you that

it's Jim.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" he says, recognising you at the same moment.

"Yes," you answer, rubbing your eyes; "what's happened?"

"Bally tent's blown down, I think," he says.

"Where's Bill?"

Then you both raise up your voices and shout for "Bill!" and the ground

beneath you heaves and rocks, and the muffled voice that you heard before

replies from out the ruin:

"Get off my head, can't you?"

And Bill struggles out, a muddy, trampled wreck, and in an unnecessarily

aggressive mood - he being under the evident belief that the whole thing

has been done on purpose.

In the morning you are all three speechless, owing to having caught

severe colds in the night; you also feel very quarrelsome, and you swear

at each other in hoarse whispers during the whole of breakfast time.

We therefore decided that we would sleep out on fine nights; and hotel

it, and inn it, and pub. it, like respectable folks, when it was wet, or

when we felt inclined for a change.

Montmorency hailed this compromise with much approval. He does not revel

in romantic solitude. Give him something noisy; and if a trifle low, so

much the jollier. To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was

an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in

the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-

world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and-

nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the

tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen.

When first he came to live at my expense, I never thought I should be

able to get him to stop long. I used to sit down and look at him, as he

sat on the rug and looked up at me, and think: "Oh, that dog will never

live. He will be snatched up to the bright skies in a chariot, that is

what will happen to him."

But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had killed; and

had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruff of his neck, out of

a hundred and fourteen street fights; and had had a dead cat brought

round for my inspection by an irate female, who called me a murderer; and

had been summoned by the man next door but one for having a ferocious dog

at large, that had kept him pinned up in his own tool-shed, afraid to

venture his nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold night; and

had learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirty

shillings by backing him to kill rats against time, then I began to think

that maybe they'd let him remain on earth for a bit longer, after all.

To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the most disreputable dogs

to be found in the town, and lead them out to march round the slums to

fight other disreputable dogs, is Montmorency's idea of "life;" and so,

as I before observed, he gave to the suggestion of inns, and pubs., and

hotels his most emphatic approbation.

Having thus settled the sleeping arrangements to the satisfaction of all

four of us, the only thing left to discuss was what we should take with

us; and this we had begun to argue, when Harris said he'd had enough

oratory for one night, and proposed that we should go out and have a

smile, saying that he had found a place, round by the square, where you

could really get a drop of Irish worth drinking.

George said he felt thirsty (I never knew George when he didn't); and, as

I had a presentiment that a little whisky, warm, with a slice of lemon,

would do my complaint good, the debate was, by common assent, adjourned

to the following night; and the assembly put on its hats and went out.

CHAPTER III.

2008-04-13T21:04:00.001+05:30

CHAPTER III.

ARRANGEMENTS SETTLED. - HARRIS'S METHOD OF DOING WORK. - HOW THE ELDERLY,

FAMILY-MAN PUTS UP A PICTURE. - GEORGE MAKES A SENSIBLE, REMARK. -

DELIGHTS OF EARLY MORNING BATHING. - PROVISIONS FOR GETTING UPSET.

SO, on the following evening, we again assembled, to discuss and arrange

our plans. Harris said:

"Now, the first thing to settle is what to take with us. Now, you get a

bit of paper and write down, J., and you get the grocery catalogue,

George, and somebody give me a bit of pencil, and then I'll make out a

list."

That's Harris all over - so ready to take the burden of everything

himself, and put it on the backs of other people.

He always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger. You never saw such a

commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger

undertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from the frame-

maker's, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and

Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would

say:

"Oh, you leave that to ME. Don't you, any of you, worry yourselves about

that. I'LL do all that."

And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would send the girl

out for sixpen'orth of nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell

her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually work down, and

start the whole house.

"Now you go and get me my hammer, Will," he would shout; "and you bring

me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the step-ladder, and I had better have

a kitchen-chair, too; and, Jim! you run round to Mr. Goggles, and tell

him, `Pa's kind regards, and hopes his leg's better; and will he lend him

his spirit-level?' And don't you go, Maria, because I shall want

somebody to hold me the light; and when the girl comes back, she must go

out again for a bit of picture-cord; and Tom! - where's Tom? - Tom, you

come here; I shall want you to hand me up the picture."

And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come out

of the frame, and he would try to save the glass, and cut himself; and

then he would spring round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He

could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coat

he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat, and all

the house had to leave off looking for his tools, and start looking for

his coat; while he would dance round and hinder them.

"Doesn't anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? I never came

across such a set in all my life - upon my word I didn't. Six of you! -

and you can't find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago! Well, of

all the - "

Then he'd get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call

out:

"Oh, you can give it up! I've found it myself now. Might just as well

ask the cat to find anything as expect you people to find it."

And, when half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new

glass had been got, and the tools, and the ladder, and the chair, and the

candle had been brought, he would have another go, the whole family,

including the girl and the charwoman, standing round in a semi-circle,

ready to help. Two people would have to hold the chair, and a third

would help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand him

a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold

of the nail, and drop it.

"There!" he would say, in an injured tone, "now the nail's gone."

And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it, while he

would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if he was to be

kept there all the evening.

The nail would be found at last, but by that time he would have lost the

hammer.

"Where's the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great heavens!

Seven of you, gaping round there, and you don't know what I did with the

hammer!"

We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lost sight of

the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in, and each

of us had to get up on the chair, beside him, and see if we could find

it; and we would each discover it in a different place, and he would call

us all fools, one after another, and tell us to get down. And he would

take the rule, and re-measure, and find that he wanted half thirty-one

and three-eighths inches from the corner, and would try to do it in his

head, and go mad.

And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive at different

results, and sneer at one another. And in the general row, the original

number would be forgotten, and Uncle Podger would have to measure it

again.

He would use a bit of string this time, and at the critical moment, when

the old fool was leaning over the chair at an angle of forty-five, and

trying to reach a point three inches beyond what was possible for him to

reach, the string would slip, and down he would slide on to the piano, a

really fine musical effect being produced by the suddenness with which

his head and body struck all the notes at the same time.

And Aunt Maria would say that she would not allow the children to stand

round and hear such language.

At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed again, and put the point

of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his right

hand. And, with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop the

hammer, with a yell, on somebody's toes.

Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to

hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he'd let her know in time, so that

she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while

it was being done.

"Oh! you women, you make such a fuss over everything," Uncle Podger would

reply, picking himself up. "Why, I LIKE doing a little job of this

sort."

And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow, the nail

would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it, and

Uncle Podger be precipitated against the wall with force nearly

sufficient to flatten his nose.

Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was

made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up - very crooked and

insecure, the wall for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed

down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched - except Uncle

Podger.

"There you are," he would say, stepping heavily off the chair on to the

charwoman's corns, and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride.

"Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like

that!"

Harris will be just that sort of man when he grows up, I know, and I told

him so. I said I could not permit him to take so much labour upon

himself. I said:

"No; YOU get the paper, and the pencil, and the catalogue, and George

write down, and I'll do the work."

The first list we made out had to be discarded. It was clear that the

upper reaches of the Thames would not allow of the navigation of a boat

sufficiently large to take the things we had set down as indispensable;

so we tore the list up, and looked at one another!

George said:

"You know we are on a wrong track altogether. We must not think of the

things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do

without."

George comes out really quite sensible at times. You'd be surprised. I

call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but

with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How many

people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of

swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the

pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless

lumber.

How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big

houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not

care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for;

with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and

fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest

lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries

that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the

criminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head

that wears it!

It is lumber, man - all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat

so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so

cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom

from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness -

no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or

the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the

great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods

all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-

waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget-me-nots.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with

only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two

friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat,

a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little

more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable

to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain

merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to

work. Time to drink in life's sunshine - time to listen to the AEolian

music that the wind of God draws from the human heart-strings around us -

time to -

I beg your pardon, really. I quite forgot.

Well, we left the list to George, and he began it.

"We won't take a tent, suggested George; "we will have a boat with a

cover. It is ever so much simpler, and more comfortable."

It seemed a good thought, and we adopted it. I do not know whether you

have ever seen the thing I mean. You fix iron hoops up over the boat,

and stretch a huge canvas over them, and fasten it down all round, from

stem to stern, and it converts the boat into a sort of little house, and

it is beautifully cosy, though a trifle stuffy; but there, everything has

its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came

down upon him for the funeral expenses.

George said that in that case we must take a rug each, a lamp, some soap,

a brush and comb (between us), a toothbrush (each), a basin, some tooth-

powder, some shaving tackle (sounds like a French exercise, doesn't it?),

and a couple of big-towels for bathing. I notice that people always make

gigantic arrangements for bathing when they are going anywhere near the

water, but that they don't bathe much when they are there.

It is the same when you go to the sea-side. I always determine - when

thinking over the matter in London - that I'll get up early every

morning, and go and have a dip before breakfast, and I religiously pack

up a pair of drawers and a bath towel. I always get red bathing drawers.

I rather fancy myself in red drawers. They suit my complexion so. But

when I get to the sea I don't feel somehow that I want that early morning

bathe nearly so much as I did when I was in town.

On the contrary, I feel more that I want to stop in bed till the last

moment, and then come down and have my breakfast. Once or twice virtue

has triumphed, and I have got out at six and half-dressed myself, and

have taken my drawers and towel, and stumbled dismally off. But I

haven't enjoyed it. They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind,

waiting for me, when I go to bathe in the early morning; and they pick

out all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and they

sharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so that

I can't see them, and they take the sea and put it two miles out, so that

I have to huddle myself up in my arms and hop, shivering, through six

inches of water. And when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quite

insulting.

One huge wave catches me up and chucks me in a sitting posture, as hard

as ever it can, down on to a rock which has been put there for me. And,

before I've said "Oh! Ugh!" and found out what has gone, the wave comes

back and carries me out to mid-ocean. I begin to strike out frantically

for the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see home and friends again, and

wish I'd been kinder to my little sister when a boy (when I was a boy, I

mean). Just when I have given up all hope, a wave retires and leaves me

sprawling like a star-fish on the sand, and I get up and look back and

find that I've been swimming for my life in two feet of water. I hop

back and dress, and crawl home, where I have to pretend I liked it.

In the present instance, we all talked as if we were going to have a long

swim every morning.

George said it was so pleasant to wake up in the boat in the fresh

morning, and plunge into the limpid river. Harris said there was nothing

like a swim before breakfast to give you an appetite. He said it always

gave him an appetite. George said that if it was going to make Harris

eat more than Harris ordinarily ate, then he should protest against

Harris having a bath at all.

He said there would be quite enough hard work in towing sufficient food

for Harris up against stream, as it was.

I urged upon George, however, how much pleasanter it would be to have

Harris clean and fresh about the boat, even if we did have to take a few

more hundredweight of provisions; and he got to see it in my light, and

withdrew his opposition to Harris's bath.

Agreed, finally, that we should take THREE bath towels, so as not to keep

each other waiting.

For clothes, George said two suits of flannel would be sufficient, as we

could wash them ourselves, in the river, when they got dirty. We asked

him if he had ever tried washing flannels in the river, and he replied:

"No, not exactly himself like; but he knew some fellows who had, and it

was easy enough;" and Harris and I were weak enough to fancy he knew what

he was talking about, and that three respectable young men, without

position or influence, and with no experience in washing, could really

clean their own shirts and trousers in the river Thames with a bit of

soap.

We were to learn in the days to come, when it was too late, that George

was a miserable impostor, who could evidently have known nothing whatever

about the matter. If you had seen these clothes after - but, as the

shilling shockers say, we anticipate.

George impressed upon us to take a change of under-things and plenty of

socks, in case we got upset and wanted a change; also plenty of

handkerchiefs, as they would do to wipe things, and a pair of leather

boots as well as our boating shoes, as we should want them if we got

upset.

CHAPTER IV.

2008-04-13T21:03:00.003+05:30

CHAPTER IV.

THE FOOD QUESTION. - OBJECTIONS TO PARAFFINE OIL AS AN ATMOSPHERE. -

ADVANTAGES OF CHEESE AS A TRAVELLING COMPANION. - A MARRIED WOMAN DESERTS

HER HOME. - FURTHER PROVISION FOR GETTING UPSET. - I PACK. - CUSSEDNESS

OF TOOTH-BRUSHES. - GEORGE AND HARRIS PACK. - AWFUL BEHAVIOUR OF

MONTMORENCY. - WE RETIRE TO REST.

THEN we discussed the food question. George said:

"Begin with breakfast." (George is so practical.) "Now for breakfast we

shall want a frying-pan" - (Harris said it was indigestible; but we

merely urged him not to be an ass, and George went on) - "a tea-pot and a

kettle, and a methylated spirit stove."

"No oil," said George, with a significant look; and Harris and I agreed.

We had taken up an oil-stove once, but "never again." It had been like

living in an oil-shop that week. It oozed. I never saw such a thing as

paraffine oil is to ooze. We kept it in the nose of the boat, and, from

there, it oozed down to the rudder, impregnating the whole boat and

everything in it on its way, and it oozed over the river, and saturated

the scenery and spoilt the atmosphere. Sometimes a westerly oily wind

blew, and at other times an easterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a

northerly oily wind, and maybe a southerly oily wind; but whether it came

from the Arctic snows, or was raised in the waste of the desert sands, it

came alike to us laden with the fragrance of paraffine oil.

And that oil oozed up and ruined the sunset; and as for the moonbeams,

they positively reeked of paraffine.

We tried to get away from it at Marlow. We left the boat by the bridge,

and took a walk through the town to escape it, but it followed us. The

whole town was full of oil. We passed through the church-yard, and it

seemed as if the people had been buried in oil. The High Street stunk of

oil; we wondered how people could live in it. And we walked miles upon

miles out Birmingham way; but it was no use, the country was steeped in

oil.

At the end of that trip we met together at midnight in a lonely field,

under a blasted oak, and took an awful oath (we had been swearing for a

whole week about the thing in an ordinary, middle-class way, but this was

a swell affair) - an awful oath never to take paraffine oil with us in a

boat again-except, of course, in case of sickness.

Therefore, in the present instance, we confined ourselves to methylated

spirit. Even that is bad enough. You get methylated pie and methylated

cake. But methylated spirit is more wholesome when taken into the system

in large quantities than paraffine oil.

For other breakfast things, George suggested eggs and bacon, which were

easy to cook, cold meat, tea, bread and butter, and jam. For lunch, he

said, we could have biscuits, cold meat, bread and butter, and jam - but

NO CHEESE. Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself. It wants the

whole boat to itself. It goes through the hamper, and gives a cheesy

flavour to everything else there. You can't tell whether you are eating

apple-pie or German sausage, or strawberries and cream. It all seems

cheese. There is too much odour about cheese.

I remember a friend of mine, buying a couple of cheeses at Liverpool.

Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a two hundred

horse-power scent about them that might have been warranted to carry

three miles, and knock a man over at two hundred yards. I was in

Liverpool at the time, and my friend said that if I didn't mind he would

get me to take them back with me to London, as he should not be coming up

for a day or two himself, and he did not think the cheeses ought to be

kept much longer.

"Oh, with pleasure, dear boy," I replied, "with pleasure."

I called for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab. It was a

ramshackle affair, dragged along by a knock-kneed, broken-winded

somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment of enthusiasm, during

conversation, referred to as a horse. I put the cheeses on the top, and

we started off at a shamble that would have done credit to the swiftest

steam-roller ever built, and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we

turned the corner. There, the wind carried a whiff from the cheeses full

on to our steed. It woke him up, and, with a snort of terror, he dashed

off at three miles an hour. The wind still blew in his direction, and

before we reached the end of the street he was laying himself out at the

rate of nearly four miles an hour, leaving the cripples and stout old

ladies simply nowhere.

It took two porters as well as the driver to hold him in at the station;

and I do not think they would have done it, even then, had not one of the

men had the presence of mind to put a handkerchief over his nose, and to

light a bit of brown paper.

I took my ticket, and marched proudly up the platform, with my cheeses,

the people falling back respectfully on either side. The train was

crowded, and I had to get into a carriage where there were already seven

other people. One crusty old gentleman objected, but I got in,

notwithstanding; and, putting my cheeses upon the rack, squeezed down

with a pleasant smile, and said it was a warm day.

A few moments passed, and then the old gentleman began to fidget.

"Very close in here," he said.

"Quite oppressive," said the man next him.

And then they both began sniffing, and, at the third sniff, they caught

it right on the chest, and rose up without another word and went out.

And then a stout lady got up, and said it was disgraceful that a

respectable married woman should be harried about in this way, and

gathered up a bag and eight parcels and went. The remaining four

passengers sat on for a while, until a solemn-looking man in the corner,

who, from his dress and general appearance, seemed to belong to the

undertaker class, said it put him in mind of dead baby; and the other

three passengers tried to get out of the door at the same time, and hurt

themselves.

I smiled at the black gentleman, and said I thought we were going to have

the carriage to ourselves; and he laughed pleasantly, and said that some

people made such a fuss over a little thing. But even he grew strangely

depressed after we had started, and so, when we reached Crewe, I asked

him to come and have a drink. He accepted, and we forced our way into

the buffet, where we yelled, and stamped, and waved our umbrellas for a

quarter of an hour; and then a young lady came, and asked us if we wanted

anything.

"What's yours?" I said, turning to my friend.

"I'll have half-a-crown's worth of brandy, neat, if you please, miss," he

responded.

And he went off quietly after he had drunk it and got into another

carriage, which I thought mean.

From Crewe I had the compartment to myself, though the train was crowded.

As we drew up at the different stations, the people, seeing my empty

carriage, would rush for it. "Here y' are, Maria; come along, plenty of

room." "All right, Tom; we'll get in here," they would shout. And they

would run along, carrying heavy bags, and fight round the door to get in

first. And one would open the door and mount the steps, and stagger back

into the arms of the man behind him; and they would all come and have a

sniff, and then droop off and squeeze into other carriages, or pay the

difference and go first.

From Euston, I took the cheeses down to my friend's house. When his wife

came into the room she smelt round for an instant. Then she said:

"What is it? Tell me the worst."

I said:

"It's cheeses. Tom bought them in Liverpool, and asked me to bring them

up with me."

And I added that I hoped she understood that it had nothing to do with

me; and she said that she was sure of that, but that she would speak to

Tom about it when he came back.

My friend was detained in Liverpool longer than he expected; and, three

days later, as he hadn't returned home, his wife called on me. She said:

"What did Tom say about those cheeses?"

I replied that he had directed they were to be kept in a moist place, and

that nobody was to touch them.

She said:

"Nobody's likely to touch them. Had he smelt them?"

I thought he had, and added that he seemed greatly attached to them.

"You think he would be upset," she queried, "if I gave a man a sovereign

to take them away and bury them?"

I answered that I thought he would never smile again.

An idea struck her. She said:

"Do you mind keeping them for him? Let me send them round to you."

"Madam," I replied, "for myself I like the smell of cheese, and the

journey the other day with them from Liverpool I shall ever look back

upon as a happy ending to a pleasant holiday. But, in this world, we

must consider others. The lady under whose roof I have the honour of

residing is a widow, and, for all I know, possibly an orphan too. She

has a strong, I may say an eloquent, objection to being what she terms

`put upon.' The presence of your husband's cheeses in her house she

would, I instinctively feel, regard as a `put upon'; and it shall never

be said that I put upon the widow and the orphan."

"Very well, then," said my friend's wife, rising, "all I have to say is,

that I shall take the children and go to an hotel until those cheeses are

eaten. I decline to live any longer in the same house with them."

She kept her word, leaving the place in charge of the charwoman, who,

when asked if she could stand the smell, replied, "What smell?" and who,

when taken close to the cheeses and told to sniff hard, said she could

detect a faint odour of melons. It was argued from this that little

injury could result to the woman from the atmosphere, and she was left.

The hotel bill came to fifteen guineas; and my friend, after reckoning

everything up, found that the cheeses had cost him eight-and-sixpence a

pound. He said he dearly loved a bit of cheese, but it was beyond his

means; so he determined to get rid of them. He threw them into the

canal; but had to fish them out again, as the bargemen complained. They

said it made them feel quite faint. And, after that, he took them one

dark night and left them in the parish mortuary. But the coroner

discovered them, and made a fearful fuss.

He said it was a plot to deprive him of his living by waking up the

corpses.

My friend got rid of them, at last, by taking them down to a sea-side

town, and burying them on the beach. It gained the place quite a

reputation. Visitors said they had never noticed before how strong the

air was, and weak-chested and consumptive people used to throng there for

years afterwards.

Fond as I am of cheese, therefore, I hold that George was right in

declining to take any.

"We shan't want any tea," said George (Harris's face fell at this); "but

we'll have a good round, square, slap-up meal at seven - dinner, tea, and

supper combined."

Harris grew more cheerful. George suggested meat and fruit pies, cold

meat, tomatoes, fruit, and green stuff. For drink, we took some

wonderful sticky concoction of Harris's, which you mixed with water and

called lemonade, plenty of tea, and a bottle of whisky, in case, as

George said, we got upset.

It seemed to me that George harped too much on the getting-upset idea.

It seemed to me the wrong spirit to go about the trip in.

But I'm glad we took the whisky.

We didn't take beer or wine. They are a mistake up the river. They make

you feel sleepy and heavy. A glass in the evening when you are doing a

mouch round the town and looking at the girls is all right enough; but

don't drink when the sun is blazing down on your head, and you've got

hard work to do.

We made a list of the things to be taken, and a pretty lengthy one it

was, before we parted that evening. The next day, which was Friday, we

got them all together, and met in the evening to pack. We got a big

Gladstone for the clothes, and a couple of hampers for the victuals and

the cooking utensils. We moved the table up against the window, piled

everything in a heap in the middle of the floor, and sat round and looked

at it.

I said I'd pack.

I rather pride myself on my packing. Packing is one of those many things

that I feel I know more about than any other person living. (It

surprises me myself, sometimes, how many of these subjects there are.) I

impressed the fact upon George and Harris, and told them that they had

better leave the whole matter entirely to me. They fell into the

suggestion with a readiness that had something uncanny about it. George

put on a pipe and spread himself over the easy-chair, and Harris cocked

his legs on the table and lit a cigar.

This was hardly what I intended. What I had meant, of course, was, that

I should boss the job, and that Harris and George should potter about

under my directions, I pushing them aside every now and then with, "Oh,

you - !" "Here, let me do it." "There you are, simple enough!" - really

teaching them, as you might say. Their taking it in the way they did

irritated me. There is nothing does irritate me more than seeing other

people sitting about doing nothing when I'm working.

I lived with a man once who used to make me mad that way. He would loll

on the sofa and watch me doing things by the hour together, following me

round the room with his eyes, wherever I went. He said it did him real

good to look on at me, messing about. He said it made him feel that life

was not an idle dream to be gaped and yawned through, but a noble task,

full of duty and stern work. He said he often wondered now how he could

have gone on before he met me, never having anybody to look at while they

worked.

Now, I'm not like that. I can't sit still and see another man slaving

and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my

hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature.

I can't help it.

However, I did not say anything, but started the packing. It seemed a

longer job than I had thought it was going to be; but I got the bag

finished at last, and I sat on it and strapped it.

"Ain't you going to put the boots in?" said Harris.

And I looked round, and found I had forgotten them. That's just like

Harris. He couldn't have said a word until I'd got the bag shut and

strapped, of course. And George laughed - one of those irritating,

senseless, chuckle-headed, crack-jawed laughs of his. They do make me so

wild.

I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going

to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-

brush? I don't know how it is, but I never do know whether I've packed

my tooth-brush.

My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I'm travelling, and makes

my life a misery. I dream that I haven't packed it, and wake up in a

cold perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the

morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get

it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I

repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment

and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in my pocket-

handkerchief.

Of course I had to turn every mortal thing out now, and, of course, I

could not find it. I rummaged the things up into much the same state

that they must have been before the world was created, and when chaos

reigned. Of course, I found George's and Harris's eighteen times over,

but I couldn't find my own. I put the things back one by one, and held

everything up and shook it. Then I found it inside a boot. I repacked

once more.

When I had finished, George asked if the soap was in. I said I didn't

care a hang whether the soap was in or whether it wasn't; and I slammed

the bag to and strapped it, and found that I had packed my tobacco-pouch

in it, and had to re-open it. It got shut up finally at 10.5 p.m., and

then there remained the hampers to do. Harris said that we should be

wanting to start in less than twelve hours' time, and thought that he and

George had better do the rest; and I agreed and sat down, and they had a

go.

They began in a light-hearted spirit, evidently intending to show me how

to do it. I made no comment; I only waited. When George is hanged,

Harris will be the worst packer in this world; and I looked at the piles

of plates and cups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and

stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes, &c., and felt that the thing would soon

become exciting.

It did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing they

did. They did that just to show you what they COULD do, and to get you

interested.

Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and squashed it,

and they had to pick out the tomato with a teaspoon.

And then it was George's turn, and he trod on the butter. I didn't say

anything, but I came over and sat on the edge of the table and watched

them. It irritated them more than anything I could have said. I felt

that. It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped on things, and

put things behind them, and then couldn't find them when they wanted

them; and they packed the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on

top, and smashed the pies in.

They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter! I never saw two

men do more with one-and-twopence worth of butter in my whole life than

they did. After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it

in the kettle. It wouldn't go in, and what WAS in wouldn't come out.

They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris

sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking for it all over the

room.

"I'll take my oath I put it down on that chair," said George, staring at

the empty seat.

"I saw you do it myself, not a minute ago," said Harris.

Then they started round the room again looking for it; and then they met

again in the centre, and stared at one another.

"Most extraordinary thing I ever heard of," said George.

"So mysterious!" said Harris.

Then George got round at the back of Harris and saw it.

"Why, here it is all the time," he exclaimed, indignantly.

"Where?" cried Harris, spinning round.

"Stand still, can't you!" roared George, flying after him.

And they got it off, and packed it in the teapot.

Montmorency was in it all, of course. Montmorency's ambition in life, is

to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he

particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people

mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has not

been wasted.

To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadily for an hour,

is his highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in

accomplishing this, his conceit becomes quite unbearable.

He came and sat down on things, just when they were wanted to be packed;

and he laboured under the fixed belief that, whenever Harris or George

reached out their hand for anything, it was his cold, damp nose that they

wanted. He put his leg into the jam, and he worried the teaspoons, and

he pretended that the lemons were rats, and got into the hamper and

killed three of them before Harris could land him with the frying-pan.

Harris said I encouraged him. I didn't encourage him. A dog like that

don't want any encouragement. It's the natural, original sin that is

born in him that makes him do things like that.

The packing was done at 12.50; and Harris sat on the big hamper, and said

he hoped nothing would be found broken. George said that if anything was

broken it was broken, which reflection seemed to comfort him. He also

said he was ready for bed.

We were all ready for bed. Harris was to sleep with us that night, and

we went upstairs.

We tossed for beds, and Harris had to sleep with me. He said:

"Do you prefer the inside or the outside, J.?"

I said I generally preferred to sleep INSIDE a bed.

Harris said it was old.

George said:

"What time shall I wake you fellows?"

Harris said:

"Seven."

I said:

"No - six," because I wanted to write some letters.

Harris and I had a bit of a row over it, but at last split the

difference, and said half-past six.

"Wake us at 6.30, George," we said.

George made no answer, and we found, on going over, that he had been

asleep for some time; so we placed the bath where he could tumble into it

on getting out in the morning, and went to bed ourselves.

CHAPTER V.

2008-04-13T21:03:00.001+05:30

CHAPTER V.

MRS. P. AROUSES US. - GEORGE, THE SLUGGARD. - THE "WEATHER FORECAST"

SWINDLE. - OUR LUGGAGE. - DEPRAVITY OF THE SMALL BOY. - THE PEOPLE GATHER

ROUND US. - WE DRIVE OFF IN GREAT STYLE, AND ARRIVE AT WATERLOO. -

INNOCENCE OF SOUTH WESTERN OFFICIALS CONCERNING SUCH WORLDLY THINGS AS

TRAINS. - WE ARE AFLOAT, AFLOAT IN AN OPEN BOAT.

IT was Mrs. Poppets that woke me up next morning.

She said:

"Do you know that it's nearly nine o'clock, sir?"

"Nine o' what?" I cried, starting up.

"Nine o'clock," she replied, through the keyhole. "I thought you was a-

oversleeping yourselves."

I woke Harris, and told him. He said:

"I thought you wanted to get up at six?"

"So I did," I answered; "why didn't you wake me?"

"How could I wake you, when you didn't wake me?" he retorted. "Now we

shan't get on the water till after twelve. I wonder you take the trouble

to get up at all."

"Um," I replied, "lucky for you that I do. If I hadn't woke you, you'd

have lain there for the whole fortnight."

We snarled at one another in this strain for the next few minutes, when

we were interrupted by a defiant snore from George.

It reminded us, for the first time since our being called, of his

existence.

There he lay - the man who had wanted to know what time he should wake us

- on his back, with his mouth wide open, and his knees stuck up.

I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man

asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me. It seems to me so shocking to

see the precious hours of a man's life - the priceless moments that will

never come back to him again - being wasted in mere brutish sleep.

There was George, throwing away in hideous sloth the inestimable gift of

time; his valuable life, every second of which he would have to account

for hereafter, passing away from him, unused. He might have been up

stuffing himself with eggs and bacon, irritating the dog, or flirting

with the slavey, instead of sprawling there, sunk in soul-clogging

oblivion.

It was a terrible thought. Harris and I appeared to be struck by it at

the same instant. We determined to save him, and, in this noble resolve,

our own dispute was forgotten. We flew across and slung the clothes off

him, and Harris landed him one with a slipper, and I shouted in his ear,

and he awoke.

"Wasermarrer?" he observed, sitting up.

"Get up, you fat-headed chunk!" roared Harris. "It's quarter to ten."

"What!" he shrieked, jumping out of bed into the bath; "Who the thunder

put this thing here?"

We told him he must have been a fool not to see the bath.

We finished dressing, and, when it came to the extras, we remembered that

we had packed the tooth-brushes and the brush and comb (that tooth-brush

of mine will be the death of me, I know), and we had to go downstairs,

and fish them out of the bag. And when we had done that George wanted

the shaving tackle. We told him that he would have to go without shaving

that morning, as we weren't going to unpack that bag again for him, nor

for anyone like him.

He said:

"Don't be absurd. How can I go into the City like this?"

It was certainly rather rough on the City, but what cared we for human

suffering? As Harris said, in his common, vulgar way, the City would

have to lump it.

We went downstairs to breakfast. Montmorency had invited two other dogs

to come and see him off, and they were whiling away the time by fighting

on the doorstep. We calmed them with an umbrella, and sat down to chops

and cold beef.

Harris said:

"The great thing is to make a good breakfast," and he started with a

couple of chops, saying that he would take these while they were hot, as

the beef could wait.

George got hold of the paper, and read us out the boating fatalities, and

the weather forecast, which latter prophesied "rain, cold, wet to fine"

(whatever more than usually ghastly thing in weather that may be),

"occasional local thunder-storms, east wind, with general depression over

the Midland Counties (London and Channel). Bar. falling."

I do think that, of all the silly, irritating tomfoolishness by which we

are plagued, this "weather-forecast" fraud is about the most aggravating.

It "forecasts" precisely what happened yesterday or a the day before, and

precisely the opposite of what is going to happen to-day.

I remember a holiday of mine being completely ruined one late autumn by

our paying attention to the weather report of the local newspaper.

"Heavy showers, with thunderstorms, may be expected to-day," it would say

on Monday, and so we would give up our picnic, and stop indoors all day,

waiting for the rain. - And people would pass the house, going off in

wagonettes and coaches as jolly and merry as could be, the sun shining

out, and not a cloud to be seen.

"Ah!" we said, as we stood looking out at them through the window, "won't

they come home soaked!"

And we chuckled to think how wet they were going to get, and came back

and stirred the fire, and got our books, and arranged our specimens of

seaweed and cockle shells. By twelve o'clock, with the sun pouring into

the room, the heat became quite oppressive, and we wondered when those

heavy showers and occasional thunderstorms were going to begin.

"Ah! they'll come in the afternoon, you'll find," we said to each other.

"Oh, WON'T those people get wet. What a lark!"

At one o'clock, the landlady would come in to ask if we weren't going

out, as it seemed such a lovely day.

"No, no," we replied, with a knowing chuckle, "not we. WE don't mean to

get wet - no, no."

And when the afternoon was nearly gone, and still there was no sign of

rain, we tried to cheer ourselves up with the idea that it would come

down all at once, just as the people had started for home, and were out

of the reach of any shelter, and that they would thus get more drenched

than ever. But not a drop ever fell, and it finished a grand day, and a

lovely night after it.

The next morning we would read that it was going to be a "warm, fine to

set-fair day; much heat;" and we would dress ourselves in flimsy things,

and go out, and, half-an-hour after we had started, it would commence to

rain hard, and a bitterly cold wind would spring up, and both would keep

on steadily for the whole day, and we would come home with colds and

rheumatism all over us, and go to bed.

The weather is a thing that is beyond me altogether. I never can

understand it. The barometer is useless: it is as misleading as the

newspaper forecast.

There was one hanging up in a hotel at Oxford at which I was staying last

spring, and, when I got there, it was pointing to "set fair." It was

simply pouring with rain outside, and had been all day; and I couldn't

quite make matters out. I tapped the barometer, and it jumped up and

pointed to "very dry." The Boots stopped as he was passing, and said he

expected it meant to-morrow. I fancied that maybe it was thinking of the

week before last, but Boots said, No, he thought not.

I tapped it again the next morning, and it went up still higher, and the

rain came down faster than ever. On Wednesday I went and hit it again,

and the pointer went round towards "set fair," "very dry," and "much

heat," until it was stopped by the peg, and couldn't go any further. It

tried its best, but the instrument was built so that it couldn't prophesy

fine weather any harder than it did without breaking itself. It

evidently wanted to go on, and prognosticate drought, and water famine,

and sunstroke, and simooms, and such things, but the peg prevented it,

and it had to be content with pointing to the mere commonplace "very

dry."

Meanwhile, the rain came down in a steady torrent, and the lower part of

the town was under water, owing to the river having overflowed.

Boots said it was evident that we were going to have a prolonged spell of

grand weather SOME TIME, and read out a poem which was printed over the

top of the oracle, about

"Long foretold, long last;

Short notice, soon past."

The fine weather never came that summer. I expect that machine must have

been referring to the following spring.

Then there are those new style of barometers, the long straight ones. I

never can make head or tail of those. There is one side for 10 a.m.

yesterday, and one side for 10 a.m. to-day; but you can't always get

there as early as ten, you know. It rises or falls for rain and fine,

with much or less wind, and one end is "Nly" and the other "Ely" (what's

Ely got to do with it?), and if you tap it, it doesn't tell you anything.

And you've got to correct it to sea-level, and reduce it to Fahrenheit,

and even then I don't know the answer.

But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it

comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand. The

prophet we like is the old man who, on the particularly gloomy-looking

morning of some day when we particularly want it to be fine, looks round

the horizon with a particularly knowing eye, and says:

"Oh no, sir, I think it will clear up all right. It will break all right

enough, sir."

"Ah, he knows", we say, as we wish him good-morning, and start off;

"wonderful how these old fellows can tell!"

And we feel an affection for that man which is not at all lessened by the

circumstances of its NOT clearing up, but continuing to rain steadily all

day.

"Ah, well," we feel, "he did his best."

For the man that prophesies us bad weather, on the contrary, we entertain

only bitter and revengeful thoughts.

"Going to clear up, d'ye think?" we shout, cheerily, as we pass.

"Well, no, sir; I'm afraid it's settled down for the day," he replies,

shaking his head.

"Stupid old fool!" we mutter, "what's HE know about it?" And, if his

portent proves correct, we come back feeling still more angry against

him, and with a vague notion that, somehow or other, he has had something

to do with it.

It was too bright and sunny on this especial morning for George's blood-

curdling readings about "Bar. falling," "atmospheric disturbance, passing

in an oblique line over Southern Europe," and "pressure increasing," to

very much upset us: and so, finding that he could not make us wretched,

and was only wasting his time, he sneaked the cigarette that I had

carefully rolled up for myself, and went.

Then Harris and I, having finished up the few things left on the table,

carted out our luggage on to the doorstep, and waited for a cab.

There seemed a good deal of luggage, when we put it all together. There

was the Gladstone and the small hand-bag, and the two hampers, and a

large roll of rugs, and some four or five overcoats and macintoshes, and

a few umbrellas, and then there was a melon by itself in a bag, because

it was too bulky to go in anywhere, and a couple of pounds of grapes in

another bag, and a Japanese paper umbrella, and a frying pan, which,

being too long to pack, we had wrapped round with brown paper.

It did look a lot, and Harris and I began to feel rather ashamed of it,

though why we should be, I can't see. No cab came by, but the street

boys did, and got interested in the show, apparently, and stopped.

Biggs's boy was the first to come round. Biggs is our greengrocer, and

his chief talent lies in securing the services of the most abandoned and

unprincipled errand-boys that civilisation has as yet produced. If

anything more than usually villainous in the boy-line crops up in our

neighbourhood, we know that it is Biggs's latest. I was told that, at

the time of the Great Coram Street murder, it was promptly concluded by

our street that Biggs's boy (for that period) was at the bottom of it,

and had he not been able, in reply to the severe cross-examination to

which he was subjected by No. 19, when he called there for orders the

morning after the crime (assisted by No. 21, who happened to be on the

step at the time), to prove a complete ALIBI, it would have gone hard

with him. I didn't know Biggs's boy at that time, but, from what I have

seen of them since, I should not have attached much importance to that

ALIBI myself.

Biggs's boy, as I have said, came round the corner. He was evidently in

a great hurry when he first dawned upon the vision, but, on catching

sight of Harris and me, and Montmorency, and the things, he eased up and

stared. Harris and I frowned at him. This might have wounded a more

sensitive nature, but Biggs's boys are not, as a rule, touchy. He came

to a dead stop, a yard from our step, and, leaning up against the

railings, and selecting a straw to chew, fixed us with his eye. He

evidently meant to see this thing out.

In another moment, the grocer's boy passed on the opposite side of the

street. Biggs's boy hailed him:

"Hi! ground floor o' 42's a-moving."

The grocer's boy came across, and took up a position on the other side of

the step. Then the young gentleman from the boot-shop stopped, and

joined Biggs's boy; while the empty-can superintendent from "The Blue

Posts" took up an independent position on the curb.

"They ain't a-going to starve, are they? " said the gentleman from the

boot-shop.

"Ah! you'd want to take a thing or two with YOU," retorted "The Blue

Posts," "if you was a-going to cross the Atlantic in a small boat."

"They ain't a-going to cross the Atlantic," struck in Biggs's boy;

"they're a-going to find Stanley."

By this time, quite a small crowd had collected, and people were asking

each other what was the matter. One party (the young and giddy portion

of the crowd) held that it was a wedding, and pointed out Harris as the

bridegroom; while the elder and more thoughtful among the populace

inclined to the idea that it was a funeral, and that I was probably the

corpse's brother.

At last, an empty cab turned up (it is a street where, as a rule, and

when they are not wanted, empty cabs pass at the rate of three a minute,

and hang about, and get in your way), and packing ourselves and our

belongings into it, and shooting out a couple of Montmorency's friends,

who had evidently sworn never to forsake him, we drove away amidst the

cheers of the crowd, Biggs's boy shying a carrot after us for luck.

We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-five started

from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever does know where a

train is going to start from, or where a train when it does start is

going to, or anything about it. The porter who took our things thought

it would go from number two platform, while another porter, with whom he

discussed the question, had heard a rumour that it would go from number

one. The station-master, on the other hand, was convinced it would start

from the local.

To put an end to the matter, we went upstairs, and asked the traffic

superintendent, and he told us that he had just met a man, who said he

had seen it at number three platform. We went to number three platform,

but the authorities there said that they rather thought that train was

the Southampton express, or else the Windsor loop. But they were sure it

wasn't the Kingston train, though why they were sure it wasn't they

couldn't say.

Then our porter said he thought that must be it on the high-level

platform; said he thought he knew the train. So we went to the high-

level platform, and saw the engine-driver, and asked him if he was going

to Kingston. He said he couldn't say for certain of course, but that he

rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn't the 11.5 for Kingston, he

said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for Virginia Water, or the

10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in that direction,

and we should all know when we got there. We slipped half-a-crown into

his hand, and begged him to be the 11.5 for Kingston.

"Nobody will ever know, on this line," we said, "what you are, or where

you're going. You know the way, you slip off quietly and go to

Kingston."

"Well, I don't know, gents," replied the noble fellow, "but I suppose

SOME train's got to go to Kingston; and I'll do it. Gimme the half-

crown."

Thus we got to Kingston by the London and South-Western Railway.

We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by was really the

Exeter mail, and that they had spent hours at Waterloo, looking for it,

and nobody knew what had become of it.

Our boat was waiting for us at Kingston just below bridge, and to it we

wended our way, and round it we stored our luggage, and into it we

stepped.

"Are you all right, sir?" said the man.

"Right it is," we answered; and with Harris at the sculls and I at the

tiller-lines, and Montmorency, unhappy and deeply suspicious, in the

prow, out we shot on to the waters which, for a fortnight, were to be our

home.

CHAPTER VI.

2008-04-13T21:02:00.002+05:30

CHAPTER VI.

KINGSTON. - INSTRUCTIVE REMARKS ON EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. - INSTRUCTIVE

OBSERVATIONS ON CARVED OAK AND LIFE IN GENERAL. - SAD CASE OF STIVVINGS,

JUNIOR. - MUSINGS ON ANTIQUITY. - I FORGET THAT I AM STEERING. -

INTERESTING RESULT. - HAMPTON COURT MAZE. - HARRIS AS A GUIDE.

IT was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as you care to

take it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf is blushing to a deeper

green; and the year seems like a fair young maid, trembling with strange,

wakening pulses on the brink of womanhood.

The quaint back streets of Kingston, where they came down to the water's

edge, looked quite picturesque in the flashing sunlight, the glinting

river with its drifting barges, the wooded towpath, the trim-kept villas

on the other side, Harris, in a red and orange blazer, grunting away at

the sculls, the distant glimpses of the grey old palace of the Tudors,

all made a sunny picture, so bright but calm, so full of life, and yet so

peaceful, that, early in the day though it was, I felt myself being

dreamily lulled off into a musing fit.

I mused on Kingston, or "Kyningestun," as it was once called in the days

when Saxon "kinges" were crowned there. Great Caesar crossed the river

there, and the Roman legions camped upon its sloping uplands. Caesar,

like, in later years, Elizabeth, seems to have stopped everywhere: only

he was more respectable than good Queen Bess; he didn't put up at the

public-houses.

She was nuts on public-houses, was England's Virgin Queen. There's

scarcely a pub. of any attractions within ten miles of London that she

does not seem to have looked in at, or stopped at, or slept at, some time

or other. I wonder now, supposing Harris, say, turned over a new leaf,

and became a great and good man, and got to be Prime Minister, and died,

if they would put up signs over the public-houses that he had patronised:

"Harris had a glass of bitter in this house;" "Harris had two of Scotch

cold here in the summer of `88;" "Harris was chucked from here in

December, 1886."

No, there would be too many of them! It would be the houses that he had

never entered that would become famous. "Only house in South London that

Harris never had a drink in!" The people would flock to it to see what

could have been the matter with it.

How poor weak-minded King Edwy must have hated Kyningestun! The

coronation feast had been too much for him. Maybe boar's head stuffed

with sugar-plums did not agree with him (it wouldn't with me, I know),

and he had had enough of sack and mead; so he slipped from the noisy

revel to steal a quiet moonlight hour with his beloved Elgiva.

Perhaps, from the casement, standing hand-in-hand, they were watching the

calm moonlight on the river, while from the distant halls the boisterous

revelry floated in broken bursts of faint-heard din and tumult.

Then brutal Odo and St. Dunstan force their rude way into the quiet room,

and hurl coarse insults at the sweet-faced Queen, and drag poor Edwy back

to the loud clamour of the drunken brawl.

Years later, to the crash of battle-music, Saxon kings and Saxon revelry

were buried side by side, and Kingston's greatness passed away for a

time, to rise once more when Hampton Court became the palace of the

Tudors and the Stuarts, and the royal barges strained at their moorings

on the river's bank, and bright-cloaked gallants swaggered down the

water-steps to cry: "What Ferry, ho! Gadzooks, gramercy."

Many of the old houses, round about, speak very plainly of those days

when Kingston was a royal borough, and nobles and courtiers lived there,

near their King, and the long road to the palace gates was gay all day

with clanking steel and prancing palfreys, and rustling silks and

velvets, and fair faces. The large and spacious houses, with their

oriel, latticed windows, their huge fireplaces, and their gabled roofs,

breathe of the days of hose and doublet, of pearl-embroidered stomachers,

and complicated oaths. They were upraised in the days "when men knew how

to build." The hard red bricks have only grown more firmly set with

time, and their oak stairs do not creak and grunt when you try to go down

them quietly.

Speaking of oak staircases reminds me that there is a magnificent carved

oak staircase in one of the houses in Kingston. It is a shop now, in the

market-place, but it was evidently once the mansion of some great

personage. A friend of mine, who lives at Kingston, went in there to buy

a hat one day, and, in a thoughtless moment, put his hand in his pocket

and paid for it then and there.

The shopman (he knows my friend) was naturally a little staggered at

first; but, quickly recovering himself, and feeling that something ought

to be done to encourage this sort of thing, asked our hero if he would

like to see some fine old carved oak. My friend said he would, and the

shopman, thereupon, took him through the shop, and up the staircase of

the house. The balusters were a superb piece of workmanship, and the

wall all the way up was oak-panelled, with carving that would have done

credit to a palace.

From the stairs, they went into the drawing-room, which was a large,

bright room, decorated with a somewhat startling though cheerful paper of

a blue ground. There was nothing, however, remarkable about the

apartment, and my friend wondered why he had been brought there. The

proprietor went up to the paper, and tapped it. It gave forth a wooden

sound.

"Oak," he explained. "All carved oak, right up to the ceiling, just the

same as you saw on the staircase."

"But, great Caesar! man," expostulated my friend; "you don't mean to say

you have covered over carved oak with blue wall-paper?"

"Yes," was the reply: "it was expensive work. Had to match-board it all

over first, of course. But the room looks cheerful now. It was awful

gloomy before."

I can't say I altogether blame the man (which is doubtless a great relief

to his mind). From his point of view, which would be that of the average

householder, desiring to take life as lightly as possible, and not that

of the old-curiosity-shop maniac, there is reason on his side. Carved

oak is very pleasant to look at, and to have a little of, but it is no

doubt somewhat depressing to live in, for those whose fancy does not lie

that way. It would be like living in a church.

No, what was sad in his case was that he, who didn't care for carved oak,

should have his drawing-room panelled with it, while people who do care

for it have to pay enormous prices to get it. It seems to be the rule of

this world. Each person has what he doesn't want, and other people have

what he does want.

Married men have wives, and don't seem to want them; and young single

fellows cry out that they can't get them. Poor people who can hardly

keep themselves have eight hearty children. Rich old couples, with no

one to leave their money to, die childless.

Then there are girls with lovers. The girls that have lovers never want

them. They say they would rather be without them, that they bother them,

and why don't they go and make love to Miss Smith and Miss Brown, who are

plain and elderly, and haven't got any lovers? They themselves don't

want lovers. They never mean to marry.

It does not do to dwell on these things; it makes one so sad.

There was a boy at our school, we used to call him Sandford and Merton.

His real name was Stivvings. He was the most extraordinary lad I ever

came across. I believe he really liked study. He used to get into awful

rows for sitting up in bed and reading Greek; and as for French irregular

verbs there was simply no keeping him away from them. He was full of

weird and unnatural notions about being a credit to his parents and an

honour to the school; and he yearned to win prizes, and grow up and be a

clever man, and had all those sorts of weak-minded ideas. I never knew

such a strange creature, yet harmless, mind you, as the babe unborn.

Well, that boy used to get ill about twice a week, so that he couldn't go

to school. There never was such a boy to get ill as that Sandford and

Merton. If there was any known disease going within ten miles of him, he

had it, and had it badly. He would take bronchitis in the dog-days, and

have hay-fever at Christmas. After a six weeks' period of drought, he

would be stricken down with rheumatic fever; and he would go out in a

November fog and come home with a sunstroke.

They put him under laughing-gas one year, poor lad, and drew all his

teeth, and gave him a false set, because he suffered so terribly with

toothache; and then it turned to neuralgia and ear-ache. He was never

without a cold, except once for nine weeks while he had scarlet fever;

and he always had chilblains. During the great cholera scare of 1871,

our neighbourhood was singularly free from it. There was only one

reputed case in the whole parish: that case was young Stivvings.

He had to stop in bed when he was ill, and eat chicken and custards and

hot-house grapes; and he would lie there and sob, because they wouldn't

let him do Latin exercises, and took his German grammar away from him.

And we other boys, who would have sacrificed ten terms of our school-life

for the sake of being ill for a day, and had no desire whatever to give

our parents any excuse for being stuck-up about us, couldn't catch so

much as a stiff neck. We fooled about in draughts, and it did us good,

and freshened us up; and we took things to make us sick, and they made us

fat, and gave us an appetite. Nothing we could think of seemed to make

us ill until the holidays began. Then, on the breaking-up day, we caught

colds, and whooping cough, and all kinds of disorders, which lasted till

the term recommenced; when, in spite of everything we could manoeuvre to

the contrary, we would get suddenly well again, and be better than ever.

Such is life; and we are but as grass that is cut down, and put into the

oven and baked.

To go back to the carved-oak question, they must have had very fair

notions of the artistic and the beautiful, our great-great-grandfathers.

Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of

three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic

beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we

prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that

gives them their charms in our eyes. The "old blue" that we hang about

our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a

few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses

that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they

understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the

eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried.

Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day

always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-

pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in

the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the

beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now

break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and

stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house?

That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It

is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots.

Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to

verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of

art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even

my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by

the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her.

But in 200 years' time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug

up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and

will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will

pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth

of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of

the tail that is lost no doubt was.

We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar

with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their

loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china

dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will

have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and

say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as "those grand

old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those

china dogs."

The "sampler" that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as

"tapestry of the Victorian era," and be almost priceless. The blue-and-

white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked

and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use

them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the

"Presents from Ramsgate," and "Souvenirs of Margate," that may have

escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English

curios.

At this point Harris threw away the sculls, got up and left his seat, and

sat on his back, and stuck his legs in the air. Montmorency howled, and

turned a somersault, and the top hamper jumped up, and all the things

came out.

I was somewhat surprised, but I did not lose my temper. I said,

pleasantly enough:

"Hulloa! what's that for?"

"What's that for? Why - "

No, on second thoughts, I will not repeat what Harris said. I may have

been to blame, I admit it; but nothing excuses violence of language and

coarseness of expression, especially in a man who has been carefully

brought up, as I know Harris has been. I was thinking of other things,

and forgot, as any one might easily understand, that I was steering, and

the consequence was that we had got mixed up a good deal with the tow-

path. It was difficult to say, for the moment, which was us and which

was the Middlesex bank of the river; but we found out after a while, and

separated ourselves.

Harris, however, said he had done enough for a bit, and proposed that I

should take a turn; so, as we were in, I got out and took the tow-line,

and ran the boat on past Hampton Court. What a dear old wall that is

that runs along by the river there! I never pass it without feeling

better for the sight of it. Such a mellow, bright, sweet old wall; what

a charming picture it would make, with the lichen creeping here, and the

moss growing there, a shy young vine peeping over the top at this spot,

to see what is going on upon the busy river, and the sober old ivy

clustering a little farther down! There are fifty shades and tints and

hues in every ten yards of that old wall. If I could only draw, and knew

how to paint, I could make a lovely sketch of that old wall, I'm sure.

I've often thought I should like to live at Hampton Court. It looks so

peaceful and so quiet, and it is such a dear old place to ramble round in

the early morning before many people are about.

But, there, I don't suppose I should really care for it when it came to

actual practice. It would be so ghastly dull and depressing in the

evening, when your lamp cast uncanny shadows on the panelled walls, and

the echo of distant feet rang through the cold stone corridors, and now

drew nearer, and now died away, and all was death-like silence, save the

beating of one's own heart.

We are creatures of the sun, we men and women. We love light and life.

That is why we crowd into the towns and cities, and the country grows

more and more deserted every year. In the sunlight - in the daytime,

when Nature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hill-sides

and the deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth

has gone to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome,

and we get frightened, like children in a silent house. Then we sit and

sob, and long for the gas-lit streets, and the sound of human voices, and

the answering throb of human life. We feel so helpless and so little in

the great stillness, when the dark trees rustle in the night-wind. There

are so many ghosts about, and their silent sighs make us feel so sad.

Let us gather together in the great cities, and light huge bonfires of a

million gas-jets, and shout and sing together, and feel brave.

Harris asked me if I'd ever been in the maze at Hampton Court. He said

he went in once to show somebody else the way. He had studied it up in a

map, and it was so simple that it seemed foolish - hardly worth the

twopence charged for admission. Harris said he thought that map must

have been got up as a practical joke, because it wasn't a bit like the

real thing, and only misleading. It was a country cousin that Harris

took in. He said:

"We'll just go in here, so that you can say you've been, but it's very

simple. It's absurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the first

turning to the right. We'll just walk round for ten minutes, and then go

and get some lunch."

They met some people soon after they had got inside, who said they had

been there for three-quarters of an hour, and had had about enough of it.

Harris told them they could follow him, if they liked; he was just going

in, and then should turn round and come out again. They said it was very

kind of him, and fell behind, and followed.

They picked up various other people who wanted to get it over, as they

went along, until they had absorbed all the persons in the maze. People

who had given up all hopes of ever getting either in or out, or of ever

seeing their home and friends again, plucked up courage at the sight of

Harris and his party, and joined the procession, blessing him. Harris

said he should judge there must have been twenty people, following him,

in all; and one woman with a baby, who had been there all the morning,

insisted on taking his arm, for fear of losing him.

Harris kept on turning to the right, but it seemed a long way, and his

cousin said he supposed it was a very big maze.

"Oh, one of the largest in Europe," said Harris.

"Yes, it must be," replied the cousin, "because we've walked a good two

miles already."

Harris began to think it rather strange himself, but he held on until, at

last, they passed the half of a penny bun on the ground that Harris's

cousin swore he had noticed there seven minutes ago. Harris said: "Oh,

impossible!" but the woman with the baby said, "Not at all," as she

herself had taken it from the child, and thrown it down there, just

before she met Harris. She also added that she wished she never had met

Harris, and expressed an opinion that he was an impostor. That made

Harris mad, and he produced his map, and explained his theory.

"The map may be all right enough," said one of the party, "if you know

whereabouts in it we are now."

Harris didn't know, and suggested that the best thing to do would be to

go back to the entrance, and begin again. For the beginning again part

of it there was not much enthusiasm; but with regard to the advisability

of going back to the entrance there was complete unanimity, and so they

turned, and trailed after Harris again, in the opposite direction. About

ten minutes more passed, and then they found themselves in the centre.

Harris thought at first of pretending that that was what he had been

aiming at; but the crowd looked dangerous, and he decided to treat it as

an accident.

Anyhow, they had got something to start from then. They did know where

they were, and the map was once more consulted, and the thing seemed

simpler than ever, and off they started for the third time.

And three minutes later they were back in the centre again.

After that, they simply couldn't get anywhere else. Whatever way they

turned brought them back to the middle. It became so regular at length,

that some of the people stopped there, and waited for the others to take

a walk round, and come back to them. Harris drew out his map again,

after a while, but the sight of it only infuriated the mob, and they told

him to go and curl his hair with it. Harris said that he couldn't help

feeling that, to a certain extent, he had become unpopular.

They all got crazy at last, and sang out for the keeper, and the man came

and climbed up the ladder outside, and shouted out directions to them.

But all their heads were, by this time, in such a confused whirl that

they were incapable of grasping anything, and so the man told them to

stop where they were, and he would come to them. They huddled together,

and waited; and he climbed down, and came in.

He was a young keeper, as luck would have it, and new to the business;

and when he got in, he couldn't find them, and he wandered about, trying

to get to them, and then HE got lost. They caught sight of him, every

now and then, rushing about the other side of the hedge, and he would see

them, and rush to get to them, and they would wait there for about five

minutes, and then he would reappear again in exactly the same spot, and

ask them where they had been.

They had to wait till one of the old keepers came back from his dinner

before they got out.

Harris said he thought it was a very fine maze, so far as he was a judge;

and we agreed that we would try to get George to go into it, on our way

back.