Told After Supper; by Jerome K. Jerome.

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Told After Supper

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This certainly begins very promisingly, in the style kniwn best to any reader familiar with the best of Jerome K. Jerome works. 

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"It was Christmas Eve. 

"I begin this way because it is the proper, orthodox, respectable way to begin, and I have been brought up in a proper, orthodox, respectable way, and taught to always do the proper, orthodox, respectable thing; and the habit clings to me. 

"Of course, as a mere matter of information it is quite unnecessary to mention the date at all. The experienced reader knows it was Christmas Eve, without my telling him. It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story, 

"Christmas Eve is the ghosts' great gala night. On Christmas Eve they hold their annual fete. On Christmas Eve everybody in Ghostland who IS anybody—or rather, speaking of ghosts, one should say, I suppose, every nobody who IS any nobody—comes out to show himself or herself, to see and to be seen, to promenade about and display their winding-sheets and grave-clothes to each other, to criticise one another's style, and sneer at one another's complexion."

"Ghosts with no position to maintain—mere middle-class ghosts— occasionally, I believe, do a little haunting on off-nights: on All-hallows Eve, and at Midsummer; and some will even run up for a mere local event—to celebrate, for instance, the anniversary of the hanging of somebody's grandfather, or to prophesy a misfortune. 

"He does love prophesying a misfortune, does the average British ghost. Send him out to prognosticate trouble to somebody, and he is happy. Let him force his way into a peaceful home, and turn the whole house upside down by foretelling a funeral, or predicting a bankruptcy, or hinting at a coming disgrace, or some other terrible disaster, about which nobody in their senses want to know sooner they could possibly help, and the prior knowledge of which can serve no useful purpose whatsoever, and he feels that he is combining duty with pleasure. He would never forgive himself if anybody in his family had a trouble and he had not been there for a couple of months beforehand, doing silly tricks on the lawn, or balancing himself on somebody's bed-rail. 

"Then there are, besides, the very young, or very conscientious ghosts with a lost will or an undiscovered number weighing heavy on their minds, who will haunt steadily all the year round; and also the fussy ghost, who is indignant at having been buried in the dust-bin or in the village pond, and who never gives the parish a single night's quiet until somebody has paid for a first-class funeral for him. 

"But these are the exceptions. As I have said, the average orthodox ghost does his one turn a year, on Christmas Eve, and is satisfied. 

"Why on Christmas Eve, of all nights in the year, I never could myself understand. It is invariably one of the most dismal of nights to be out in—cold, muddy, and wet. And besides, at Christmas time, everybody has quite enough to put up with in the way of a houseful of living relations, without wanting the ghosts of any dead ones mooning about the place, I am sure. 

"There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas—something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails. 

"And not only do the ghosts themselves always walk on Christmas Eve, but live people always sit and talk about them on Christmas Eve. Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories. Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres. It is a genial, festive season, and we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood."

And the rest more than fulfills the promise - it's not just the author's comments, but even some of the stories are hilarious. 

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August 06, 2020- August 06, 2020.

This etext was prepared 

by David Price, 

email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk 

from the 1891 Leadenhall Press edition

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Evergreens, by Jerome K. Jerome.

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Evergreens 
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At first, one might get the impression that he's waxing eloquent and poetic about nature, and one might be surprised if one is used to this author, thinking he keeps surprising one, and too, one wonders why he's so unappreciative of beauty of evergreens! He seems to not see their beauty even in winter, when they alone lend beauty to otherwise bare Nordic latitudes, whether covered in snow or otherwise. 

Then soon enough it's clear why. He's chosen an inappropriate simile, and is talking of humans. 

"There are evergreen men and women in the world, praise be to God! Not many of them, but a few. They are not the showy folk; they are not the clever, attractive folk. (Nature is an old-fashioned shopkeeper; she never puts her best goods in the window.) They are only the quiet, strong folk; they are stronger than the world, stronger than life or death, stronger than Fate. The storms of life sweep over them, and the rains beat down upon them, and the biting frosts creep round them; but the winds and the rains and the frosts pass away, and they are still standing, green and straight. They love the sunshine of life in their undemonstrative way—its pleasures, its joys. But calamity cannot bow them, sorrow and affliction bring not despair to their serene faces, only a little tightening of the lips; the sun of our prosperity makes the green of their friendship no brighter, the frost of our adversity kills not the leaves of their affection."

In short, if one recalls Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility, he's comparing the two lovers of Marianne, really, and soon enough comes precisely to that, without, of course, naming or mentioning them, or the book or the author. 

A better example would have been stone castles of gray-brown drab hue, that couldn't be whitewashed or painted gay, or decorated as other cottages or mansions can, but have strength and permanence. 

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Funnily enough, he is fair enough to do the same with genders turned, even though he's been emphatic about loving Dora and finding Agnes both unbelievable and unattractive, a bore, in his favourite work by his favourite author Charles Dickens - David Copperfield. Here he's not naming them, again, but basically lashing at silly youth for preference of the attractive. 

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It's startling when he shifts slightly, and writes about the then present society. 

"We have no school for the turning-out of stanch men in this nineteenth century. In the old, earnest times, war made men stanch and true to each other. We have learned up a good many glib phrases about the wickedness of war, and we thank God that we live in these peaceful, trading times, wherein we can—and do—devote the whole of our thoughts and energies to robbing and cheating and swindling one another—to "doing" our friends, and overcoming our enemies by trickery and lies—wherein, undisturbed by the wicked ways of fighting-men, we can cultivate to better perfection the "smartness," the craft, and the cunning, and all the other "business-like" virtues on which we so pride ourselves, and which were so neglected and treated with so little respect in the bad old age of violence, when men chose lions and eagles for their symbols rather than foxes. 

"There is a good deal to be said against war. I am not prepared to maintain that war did not bring with it disadvantages, but there can be no doubt that, for the noblest work of Nature—the making of men—it was a splendid manufactory. It taught men courage. It trained them in promptness and determination, in strength of brain and strength of hand. From its stern lessons they learned fortitude in suffering, coolness in danger, cheerfulness under reverses. Chivalry, Reverence, and Loyalty are the beautiful children of ugly War. But, above all gifts, the greatest gift it gave to men was stanchness."

One has to recall he was writing at the zenith of British Empire era, before WWI. The Russian revolution was looming, expected, according to his writing in 1905, but still a way off, and as for the war that came. he certainly was neither expecting nor could he have known the ghastliness of it before it was on them. 

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Suddenly then he writes about bulldog, about encountering one as a boy, and its the familiar Jerome K. Jerome. 

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August 05, 2020- August 05, 2020.
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Mrs. Korner Sins Her Mercies; by Jerome K. Jerome.

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Mrs. Korner Sins Her Mercies:-
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Superb and hilarious in the true Jerome K. Jerome style. 
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Mrs Korner would like her husband to be less civilised, less amiable and courteous, than he is; she goes so far as to suggest she'd prefer it if he swore, threw temper tantrums, and was drunken out of control, occasionally.  She certainly attempts, within first couple of pages, to provoke and pick a fight. 

"The domestic staff at Acacia Villa, Ravenscourt Park, lived in a state of indignation. It could be heard of mornings and evenings saying its prayers indignantly."

""You've only got ten minutes," his wife reminded him. "Do get on with your breakfast." 

""I should like," said Mr. Korner, "to finish a speech occasionally." 

""You never would," asserted Mrs. Korner. 

""I should like to try," sighed Mr. Korner, "one of these days—""

""I do mean it," repeated Mrs. Korner, for the third time, reseating herself a minute later at the table. "I would give anything—anything," reiterated the lady recklessly, "to see Christopher more like the ordinary sort of man." 

""But he has always been the sort—the sort of man he is," her bosom friend reminded her. 

""Oh, during the engagement, of course, one expects a man to be perfect. I didn't think he was going to keep it up.""

But no one could have been more shocked than Mrs Korner when soon she got her wish. 

""We had one bottle of claret between us," Mr. Korner would often recall to his mind, "of which he drank the greater part. And then he brought out the little green flask. He said it was made from pears—that in Peru they kept it specially for Children's parties. Of course, that may have been his joke; but in any case I cannot see how just one glass—I wonder could I have taken more than one glass while he was talking." It was a point that worried Mr. Korner."

"He" was a distant cousin whom Mr Korner met by chance at the docks, his ship was leaving next morning for Southern hemisphere across Atlantic ocean, and they spent the evening together, the cousin speaking of his wide experiences. Mr Korner came home aggrieved his wife wasnt as appreciative of him as women were of lesser men, and so she got her wish. 

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August 05, 2020- August 05, 2020.
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The Golden Road (The Story Girl #2) by L.M. Montgomery.

The Golden Road (The Story Girl #2)
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"Once upon a time we all walked on the golden road. It was a fair highway, through the Land of Lost Delight; shadow and sunshine were blessedly mingled, and every turn and dip revealed a fresh charm and a new loveliness to eager hearts and unspoiled eyes.

"On that road we heard the song of morning stars; we drank in fragrances aerial and sweet as a May mist; we were rich in gossamer fancies and iris hopes; our hearts sought and found the boon of dreams; the years waited beyond and they were very fair; life was a rose-lipped comrade with purple flowers dripping from her fingers."
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The Golden Road begins just where The Story Girl left off, in November.

"We had been having a splendid game of Blind-Man's Buff. That is, it had been splendid at first; but later the fun went out of it because we found that Peter was, of malice prepense, allowing himself to be caught too easily, in order that he might have the pleasure of catching Felicity— which he never failed to do, no matter how tightly his eyes were bound. What remarkable goose said that love is blind? Love can see through five folds of closely-woven muffler with ease!"

Beverley, the protagonist, introduces the idea privately proposed by Sara Stanley, so Felicity wouldn't oppose it - that of the kids getting up their own newspaper; Sara pretends to oppose it, as planned, so Felicity promptly goes for it, as does therefore Peter. Dan wasn't sure.

""' Remember it is harder still

"To have no work to do,'"

"quoted Cecily reprovingly.

""I don't believe that," rejoined Dan. "I'm like the Irishman who said he wished the man who begun work had stayed and finished it.""
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A Will, A Way And A Woman is one of the nicer stories from the Island told by Sara Stanley, and the interjections by various listeners, quite telling too.

The Christmas Harp is nice in descriptions of presents, especially relating to those received by Sara Stanley from her father. But then there is description of Uncle Alec and his concern for Cecily, and one wonders if she's going to survive, one would hate it if she didnt - it's too Little Women and its Beth!

But New Year Resolutions begins lovely, with a smile at the boys displeasure about being told by Aunt Janet to escort Sara Ray home.

"We knew perfectly well that next day in school she would tell her chums as a "dead" secret that "So-and-So King saw her home" from the hill farm the night before. Now, seeing a young lady home from choice, and being sent home with her by your aunt or mother are two entirely different things, and we thought Sara Ray ought to have sense enough to know it."

Meanwhile there are resolutions to decide.

""I can't think of any resolutions I want to make," said Felicity, who was perfectly satisfied with herself.

""I could suggest a few to you," said Dan sarcastically.

""There are so many I would like to make," said Cecily, "that I'm afraid it wouldn't be any use trying to keep them all."

""Well, let's all make a few, just for the fun of it, and see if we can keep them," I said. "And let's get paper and ink and write them out. That will make them seem more solemn and binding."

""And then pin them up on our bedroom walls, where we'll see them every day," suggested the Story Girl, "and every time we break a resolution we must put a cross opposite it. That will show us what progress we are making, as well as make us ashamed if we have too many crosses."

""And let's have a Roll of Honour in Our Magazine," suggested Felix, "and every month we'll publish the names of those who keep their resolutions perfect."

""I think it's all nonsense," said Felicity. But she joined our circle around the table , though she sat for a long time with a blank sheet before her."

Later

"Sara and Felix departed and we watched them down the lane in the moonlight— Sara walking demurely in one runner track, and Felix stalking grimly along in the other. I fear the romantic beauty of that silver shining night was entirely thrown away on my misanthropic brother.

"And it was, as I remember it, a most exquisite night— a white poem, a frosty, starry lyric of light. It was one of those nights on which one might fall asleep and dream happy dreams of gardens of mirth and song, feeling all the while through one's sleep the soft splendour and radiance of the white moon-world outside, as one hears soft, faraway music sounding through the thoughts and words that are born of it.

"As a matter of fact, however, Cecily dreamed that night that she saw three full moons in the sky, and wakened up crying with the horror of it."
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Great-Aunt Eliza's Visit, hilarious, and of course the reader knows early on why. But even then the author manages an unexpected last laugh with the recipe for risks by Felicity.

Our Magazine, the monthly written and edited by children, is illuminating - Felicity, for example, isn't as knowledgeable when she writes an essay on Shakespeare, as she's at household concerns; Peter isn't that much beneath her, after all, despite her consciousness about his being "just a hired boy" and thus lower to her socially.

We Visit Peg Bowen has several predictions by Peg Bowen, and one hopes Cecily shall live! But she squander the wishbone given by Peg Bowen to wish for safe return of the cat!

They went gathering Mayflowers and made sprays and bouquets collected in their baskets each, and came to talk of difficulty of keeping resolutions and of thinking beautiful thoughts.

""That's so," conceded the Story Girl. "There are times when I can't think anything but gray thoughts. Then, other days, I think pink and blue and gold and purple and rainbow thoughts all the time.""

"In later years, when we were grown up, she told me of it again. She said that everything had colour in her thought; the months of the year ran through all the tints of the spectrum, the days of the week were arrayed as Solomon in his glory, morning was golden, noon orange, evening crystal blue, and night violet. Every idea came to her mind robed in its own especial hue. Perhaps that was why her voice and words had such a charm, conveying to the listeners' perception such fine shadings of meaning and tint and music."
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""All the same, I wish something exciting would happen," finished the Story Girl, as we walked up through the orchard, peopled with its nun-like shadows.

""There's a new moon tonight, so may be you'll get your wish," said Peter. "My Aunt Jane didn't believe there was anything in the moon business, but you never can tell."

"The Story Girl did get her wish. Something happened the very next day."

""Tell us right off," implored Felix. "You look as if it was something tremendous."

""So it is. Listen— Aunt Olivia is going to be married."

"We stared in blank amazement. Peg Bowen's hint had faded from our minds and we had never put much faith in it."

While Aunt Olivia and the girls were busy getting their dresses ready for the wedding - Sara Stanley was to be bridesmaid - Peter came and said his father had returned, a changed man due to a revivalist meeting, and was going to take care of Peter and his mother, so they need not work. That's another of Peg Bowen's predictions coming true!

Meanwhile Cyrus Brisk has been not only pursuing Cecily with love letters containing poetry and promises of desperate acts, but threatening to beat up William Fraser if he continues his attentions towards her. Felicity is displeased that Cecily has been proposed to, and that Cyrus didn't prefer her over Cecily. But Cecily's aversion was true, and her problems solved in an unforeseen way by a strict schoolteacher with unorthodox punishments, when he caught a pupil in process of passing a note from Cyrus to Cecily in class, and asked Cecily to write out the contents on the blackboard with the name of the sender.
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Sara Stanley has possibly seen a match, Alice Meade who has a beautiful house with a beautiful garden, with her friend the Awkward Man, Jasper Dale. Sara Stanley saw it happen. 

"Jasper Dale, under all his shyness and aloofness, possessed a nature full of delicate romance and poesy, which, denied expression in the common ways of life, bloomed out in the realm of fancy and imagination. Left alone, just when the boy's nature was deepening into the man's, he turned to this ideal kingdom for all he believed the real world could never give him. Love—a strange, almost mystical love—played its part here for him. He shadowed forth to himself the vision of a woman, loving and beloved; he cherished it until it became almost as real to him as his own personality and he gave this dream woman the name he liked best—Alice. In fancy he walked and talked with her, spoke words of love to her, and heard words of love in return. When he came from work at the close of day she met him at his threshold in the twilight—a strange, fair, starry shape, as elusive and spiritual as a blossom reflected in a pool by moonlight—with welcome on her lips and in her eyes. 

"One day, when he was in Charlottetown on business, he had been struck by a picture in the window of a store. It was strangely like the woman of his dream love. He went in, awkward and embarrassed, and bought it. When he took it home he did not know where to put it. It was out of place among the dim old engravings of bewigged portraits and conventional landscapes on the walls of Golden Milestone. As he pondered the matter in his garden that evening he had an inspiration. The sunset, flaming on the windows of the west gable, kindled them into burning rose. Amid the splendour he fancied Alice's fair face peeping archly down at him from the room. The inspiration came then. It should be her room; he would fit it up for her; and her picture should hang there. 

"He was all summer carrying out his plan. Nobody must know or suspect, so he must go slowly and secretly. One by one the furnishings were purchased and brought home under cover of darkness. He arranged them with his own hands. He bought the books he thought she would like best and wrote her name in them; he got the little feminine knick-knacks of basket and thimble. Finally he saw in a store a pale blue tea-gown and the satin slippers. He had always fancied her as dressed in blue. He bought them and took them home to her room. Thereafter it was sacred to her; he always knocked on its door before he entered; he kept it sweet with fresh flowers; he sat there in the purple summer evenings and talked aloud to her or read his favourite books to her. In his fancy she sat opposite to him in her rocker, clad in the trailing blue gown, with her head leaning on one slender hand, as white as a twilight star. 

"But Carlisle people knew nothing of this—would have thought him tinged with mild lunacy if they had known. To them, he was just the shy, simple farmer he appeared. They never knew or guessed at the real Jasper Dale. 

"One spring Alice Reade came to teach music in Carlisle. Her pupils worshipped her, but the grown people thought she was rather too distant and reserved. They had been used to merry, jolly girls who joined eagerly in the social life of the place. Alice Reade held herself aloof from it—not disdainfully, but as one to whom these things were of small importance. She was very fond of books and solitary rambles; she was not at all shy but she was as sensitive as a flower; and after a time Carlisle people were content to let her live her own life and no longer resented her unlikeness to themselves. 

"She boarded with the Armstrongs, who lived beyond Golden Milestone around the hill of pines. Until the snow disappeared she went out to the main road by the long Armstrong lane; but when spring came she was wont to take a shorter way, down the pine hill, across the brook, past Jasper Dale's garden, and out through his lane. And one day, as she went by, Jasper Dale was working in his garden. 

"He was on his knees in a corner, setting out a bunch of roots—an unsightly little tangle of rainbow possibilities. It was a still spring morning; the world was green with young leaves; a little wind blew down from the pines and lost itself willingly among the budding delights of the garden. The grass opened eyes of blue violets. The sky was high and cloudless, turquoise-blue, shading off into milkiness on the far horizons. Birds were singing along the brook valley. Rollicking robins were whistling joyously in the pines. Jasper Dale's heart was filled to over flowing with a realization of all the virgin loveliness around him; the feeling in his soul had the sacredness of a prayer. At this moment he looked up and saw Alice Reade. 

"She was standing outside the garden fence, in the shadow of a great pine tree, looking not at him, for she was unaware of his presence, but at the virginal bloom of the plum trees in a far corner, with all her delight in it outblossoming freely in her face. For a moment Jasper Dale believed that his dream love had taken visible form before him. She was like—so like; not in feature, perhaps, but in grace and colouring—the grace of a slender, lissome form and the colouring of cloudy hair and wistful, dark gray eyes, and curving red mouth; and more than all, she was like her in expression—in the subtle revelation of personality exhaling from her like perfume from a flower. It was as if his own had come to him at last and his whole soul suddenly leaped out to meet and welcome her."

Jasper was in love and slow to recognise it. Here again the author has her favourite romantic ploy - he put flowers, meant for Alice, on the path she took. She knew he'd put them for her, took them, and had liked him after seeing him in church, although she'd heard Carlisle stories about him. They eventually managed to find one another, and were engaged. 
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Sara's father, Blair Stanley, suddenly returned, and while everyone loved him, they were sorry about Sara being taken back with him when he returned to Paris, because he didn't want to miss her any more. 

"There was not in all that vanished October one day that did not come in with auroral splendour and go out attended by a fair galaxy of evening stars— not a day when there were not golden lights in the wide pastures and purple hazes in the ripened distances. Never was anything so gorgeous as the maple trees that year. Maples are trees that have primeval fire in their souls. It glows out a little in their early youth, before the leaves open , in the redness and rosy-yellowness of their blossoms, but in summer it is carefully hidden under a demure, silver-lined greenness. Then when autumn comes, the maples give up trying to be sober and flame out in all the barbaric splendour and gorgeousness of their real nature, making of the hills things out of an Arabian Nights dream in the golden prime of good Haroun Alraschid."

The boys' father wrote to say he'd be back in November and take them back to Toronto. 

""Thank goodness there are no more fathers to come back," breathed Cecily with a vicious earnestness that made us all laugh, even in the midst of our dismay."
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July 30, 2020 - August 05, 2020.
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Passing of the Third Floor Back; by Jerome K. Jerome.

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Passing of the Third Floor Back;
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"Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square was coming to a very good opinion of itself: for the which not Bloomsbury Square so much as the stranger must be blamed. The stranger had arrived at Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square with the preconceived idea—where obtained from Heaven knows—that its seemingly commonplace, mean-minded, coarse-fibred occupants were in reality ladies and gentlemen of the first water; and time and observation had apparently only strengthened this absurd idea. The natural result was, Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square was coming round to the stranger's opinion of itself."

Other than this stranger addressing Miss Devine as "My child" during his last conversation with her before he leaves, there is no other clue to his identity; the author leaves it to the reader to infer or conclude this, during or after reading the short story. 
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August 04, 2020- August 04, 2020.

New York
Dodd, Mead & Company 1909
Copyright, 1904, By Jerome K. Jerome
Copyright, 1908, By Dodd, Mead & Company
Published, September, 1908
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Idle Ideas in 1905, by Jerome K. Jerome.

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Idle Ideas in 1905

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Jerome K. Jerome here seems to be getting into his element, unlike the earlier books where he was grappling with his thoughts, observations, and style.

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Are We As Interesting As We Think We Are?
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About meeting people at parties, introductions, expectations, and more - it's hilarious without being laboured, and seems like one is simply hearing the author tell about all this in a relaxed setting personally.

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Should Women Be Beautiful?
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"Pretty women are going to have a hard time of it later on. Hitherto, they have had things far too much their own way. In the future there are going to be no pretty girls, for the simple reason there will be no plain girls against which to contrast them."

It's unclear if he means only a makeover or drastic surgeries, but either way, the future of what he wrote over a century ago is here, both literally and in the sense of what he writes.
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When Is The Best Time To Be Merry?
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Here the author is ralking of what he, and perhaps the brits generally, seem to call - at least in his time - King Carnival.

Having lived in Germany a while, we know of it as Fasching, and were told it's not really different from Halloween, celebrated in U.S. on October 31st, but in Germany it last through the winter, from All Souls' Day on November 1st on to through February, and while one can technically go revelling the whole time, in reality every town generally fixes a day or so in February to do so, for the whole town and any visitors. So they deal with the dark months by revelling in dark spirits and dress up as foxes and adorn their cars with little pigs that look ferocious.

The author begins by saying he could improve Europe, and describes a little what's wrong with the carnival, but generally it's fun description. He has no clue about the dark spirits coming out.
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Do We Lie A-Bed Too Late?
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Jerome K. Jerome talks of rising early and seeing the city at dawn, but much more - of ragpickers, for instance, and seamstresses. Do they - ragpickers - still exist, one wonders. In poorer lands, in all likelihood, but surely not in Europe?

Reminds one of what one saw and heard and read in Germany. On one hand the locals are very proud they have no poverty as, for example, they have witnessed in L.A. and other cities of U.S., they inform one. On the other hand there are young people who beg at train stations at rush hours, pretending to be starving, foaming at the mouth and about to faint; one is frightened into giving a Deutsche Mark, which then the girl rushes to her boyfriend a little distance away, she's not fainting or foaming any more, it was for drugs.

When told, the neighbours inform one never to give, because these unemployed young are very well provided and prefer to not work. The neighbours tell why - it's not their fault they cannot become managers because they are not educated enough to get engineeringdegrees, like the foreigners temporarily employed in Germany.

One is infuriated at the sentiment against the foreigners and points out that education in Germany is free, and if they don't work for a degree as people of other countries do, it's hardly the foreigners at fault! Perhaps they could do housecleaning, gardening, sweeping streets?

Then one reads about German resentment against Polish workers in asparagus farming at the border, who live cheaply in Poland and work in Germany for better wages - but Germans refuse to do that work, because it's hard, and unemployment pays better.

So they find hating non-Germans more fun than working.

Jerome K. Jerome describes poor of the cities doing business early in the morning, buying and selling and haggling and saving pennies.

"One would they were better treated; alas! their owners, likewise, are overworked and underfed, housed in kennels no better. But if the majority in every society were not overworked and underfed and meanly housed, why, then the minority could not be underworked and overfed and housed luxuriously. But this is talk to which no respectable reader can be expected to listen."

In his days it was still colonial empires rising, and he's only looking at the poor of European cities, not of the lands they exploit.
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Should Married Men Play Golf?
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The author proceeds, after describing a couple on honeymoon in Scotland - when the groom forgot about their plan, being a golfer - to describe curious shorcomings of sport in Europe, particularly in France. He zeroes on tennis.

"I suppose it is the continental sky. It is so blue, so beautiful; it naturally attracts one. Anyhow, the fact remains that most tennis players on the Continent, whether English or foreign, have a tendency to aim the ball direct at Heaven. At an English club in Switzerland there existed in my days a young Englishman who was really a wonderful player. To get the ball past him was almost an impossibility. It was his return that was weak. He only had one stroke; the ball went a hundred feet or so into the air and descended in his opponent's court. The other man would stand watching it, a little speck in the Heavens, growing gradually bigger and bigger as it neared the earth. Newcomers would chatter to him, thinking he had detected a balloon or an eagle. He would wave them aside, explain to them that he would talk to them later, after the arrival of the ball. It would fall with a thud at his feet, rise another twenty yards or so and again descend. When it was at the proper height he would hit it back over the net, and the next moment it would be mounting the sky again. At tournaments I have seen that young man, with tears in his eyes, pleading to be given an umpire. Every umpire had fled. They hid behind trees, borrowed silk hats and umbrellas and pretended they were visitors—any device, however mean, to avoid the task of umpiring for that young man. Provided his opponent did not go to sleep or get cramp, one game might last all day. Anyone could return his balls; but, as I have said, to get a ball past him was almost an impossibility. He invariably won; the other man, after an hour or so, would get mad and try to lose. It was his only chance of dinner."

Thence, he returns to describing the tennis courts and its wealthy spectators in Europe being surrounded by small farms where poor emaciated families are visible plowing the field, without an ox or any other help.

"It is Anatole France, I think, who says: Society is based upon the patience of the poor."

It's startling to recall that this was, as the title says, 1905, the Russian revolution was around the corner, and even WWI was nearly a decade in future; royals were in charge everywhere in Europe except France, and society wasn't used to the changed thinking about humanity that came later; it was then only some thinkers that felt this way, and pointing out humanity of poor wasnt a sanctimonious routine practiced by bored insincere socialites. That Jerome K. Jerome was one of the revolutionary thinkers is the surprise, since an sverage reader is only familiar with his Three Men books usually.
......................................................................................
Are Early Marriages A Mistake?
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Nesting, swallows, sparrows, and the author.
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Do Writers Write Too Much?
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""Imagine to yourself, dear reader, an exquisite and gracious creature of five feet three. Her golden hair of that peculiar shade"—here would follow directions enabling the reader to work it out for himself. He was to pour some particular wine into some particular sort of glass, and wave it about before some particular sort of a light. Or he was to get up at five o'clock on a March morning and go into a wood. In this way he could satisfy himself as to the particular shade of gold the heroine's hair might happen to be. If he were a careless or lazy reader he could save himself time and trouble by taking the author's word for it. Many of them did.

""Her eyes!" They were invariably deep and liquid. They had to be pretty deep to hold all the odds and ends that were hidden in them; sunlight and shadow, mischief, unsuspected possibilities, assorted emotions, strange wild yearnings. Anything we didn't know where else to put we said was hidden in her eyes."

"To properly understand her complexion you were expected to provide yourself with a collection of assorted fruits and flowers. There are seasons in the year when it must have been difficult for the conscientious reader to have made sure of her complexion. Possibly it was for this purpose that wax flowers and fruit, carefully kept from the dust under glass cases, were common objects in former times upon the tables of the cultured."

But the author finds that coming across a serialised novel's seventh chapter in a newspaper without having read the first six isnt a problem, because a sub-editor has provided compact summaries.

"My fear is lest this sort of thing shall lead to a demand on the part of the public for condensed novels. What busy man is going to spend a week of evenings reading a book when a nice kind sub-editor is prepared in five minutes to tell him what it is all about!

"Then there will come a day—I feel it—when the business-like Editor will say to himself: "What in thunder is the sense of my paying one man to write a story of sixty thousand words and another man to read it and tell it again in sixteen hundred!""

"And what is to become of us writers if this is to be the new fashion in literature? We are paid by the length of our manuscript at rates from half-a-crown a thousand words, and upwards. In the case of fellows like Doyle and Kipling I am told it runs into pounds. How are we to live on novels the serial rights of which to most of us will work out at four and nine-pence.

"It can't be done. It is no good telling me you can see no reason why we should live. That is no answer. I'm talking plain business.

"And what about book-rights? Who is going to buy novels of three pages? They will have to be printed as leaflets and sold at a penny a dozen."
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Should Soldiers Be Polite?
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"Napoleon laid it down as an axiom that your enemy never ought to be permitted to get away from you—never ought to be allowed to feel, even for a moment, that he had shaken you off. What tactics the Belgian Army might adopt under other conditions I am unable to say, but against me personally that was the plan of campaign it determined upon and carried out with a success that was astonishing, even to myself.

"I found it utterly impossible to escape from the Belgian Army."

Trouble was, the drum. Hilarious, until one comes to this, with a sudden chill.

"It had the effect of making me a peace-at-any-price man."

That was written in in 1905!
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Ought Stories To Be True?
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Serious discourse on literature, although first two paragraphs - and more towards end - are familiar from a previous volume of this series on Idle Thoughts.
......................................................................................
Creatures That One Day Shall Be Men
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Most amazing, prophetic piece about Russia and her then current conditions,  and an expected revolution.
......................................................................................
How To Be Happy Though Little
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Hilarious, on jingoism, empires and Holland.
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Should We Say What We Think, Or Think What We Say?
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On hypocrisy.
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Is The American Husband Made Entirely Of Stained Glass
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On American wives in Europe.
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Does The Young Man Know Everything Worth Knowing?
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Idealism, material life, literature, art sale.
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How Many Charms Hath Music, Would You Say?
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Jerome K. Jerome tackles opera and Wagner.
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The white man's burden! Need it be so heavy?
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Prescient expose' on wars and hypocrisy of colonialism.
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Why Didn't He Marry The Girl?
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On Faust and more.
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What Mrs. Wilkins thought about it
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Fiscal questions, dumping, and comedy.
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Shall We Be Ruined By Chinese Cheap Labour?
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Re South African gold mines.
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How To Solve The Servant Problem
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Well written.
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Why We Hate The Foreigner
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German rules.
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August 02, 2020- August 04, 2020.

This etext was produced from the
1905 Hurst and Blackett edition
by
David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
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Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (Idle Thoughts #2); by Jerome K. Jerome.

The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow:-
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ON THE ART OF MAKING UP ONE'S MIND 


From the topic to dressing up to fashionable Byronic gloom and melancholy, to uncertainty about self, author wanders.  ......................................................................................


ON THE DISADVANTAGE OF NOT GETTING WHAT ONE WANTS


The author seems to write down the title ironically, and fight angels, fairies, and even Cinderella, before he makes his meaning clear - having a wish fulfilled isn't necessarily going to bring happiness or contentment, nor is wealth or fame. 

"We want everything. All the happiness that earth and heaven are capable of bestowing. Creature comforts, and heart and soul comforts also; and, proud-spirited beings that we are, we will not be put off with a part. Give us only everything, and we will be content."

"So, perhaps the world is wise in promising us the circus. We believe her at first. But after a while, I fear, we grow discouraged." ......................................................................................


ON THE EXCEPTIONAL MERIT ATTACHING TO THE THINGS WE MEANT TO DO 



He begins by expounding on home furniture made from beer barrels and egg-boxes, and proceeds to discuss virtue.

"I can imagine the oyster lecturing a lion on the subject of morality."

But next, the story of a boy and his fireworks, is quite lovely, although the author fails to give a satisfactory explanation, and instead generalised it to categories of other failures generally experienced by most, in public speaking or similar fields. 

He turns next to ghosts, legendary or otherwise, and wonders if intimacy with them would do away with fear. Final touch is, though, pure Jerome K. Jerome. 

"You, dull old fellow, looking out at me from the glass at which I shave, why do you haunt me? You are the ghost of a bright lad I once knew well. He might have done much, had he lived. I always had faith in him. Why do you haunt me? I would rather think of him as I remember him. I never imagined he would make such a poor ghost."
......................................................................................


ON THE PREPARATION AND EMPLOYMENT OF LOVE PHILTRES 


"May I not admire the daring tulip, because I love also the modest lily? May I not press a kiss upon the sweet violet, because the scent of the queenly rose is precious to me?"

"It is a useful philtre, the juice of that small western flower, that Oberon drops upon our eyelids as we sleep."

His exhortations to the perfect housewife to care about herself are very good points; he hasn't thought of mentioning the other way round.  ......................................................................................


ON THE DELIGHTS AND BENEFITS OF SLAVERY 


It begins seemingly beautifully. 

"My study window looks down upon Hyde Park, and often, to quote the familiar promise of each new magazine, it amuses and instructs me to watch from my tower the epitome of human life that passes to and fro beneath."

But what follows immediately is a bitter description of the hateful picture he sees thereby of humanity - apparently the opposite was either visible only in later hours, afternoon and evening promenades, theatregoing and partying and dining out, or in country. He describes them, too, but the bitterness is all there, only worse, steeped in tones despising them. 

"So we labour, driven by the whip of necessity, an army of slaves. If we do not our work, the whip descends upon us; only the pain we feel in our stomach instead of on our back. And because of that, we call ourselves free men."

Next he descends on the telephone as it was during his time, with the operator needed to connect the number one wished to call. It's not unfamiliar to readers who experienced calling long distance without direct dialling, but the author is talking about calling a block away. It would be hilarious if it weren't infuriating, and memory of those experiences isn't likely to be funny at any time soon. 

"But the question still remains: for what purpose is it all?"

"Civilizations, built up with infinite care, swept aside and lost. Beliefs for which men lived and died, proved to be mockeries. Greek Art crushed to the dust by Gothic bludgeons. ... But there comes a day when the lad understands why he learnt grammar and geography, when even dates have a meaning for him. But this is not until he has left school, and gone out into the wider world. So, perhaps, when we are a little more grown up, we too may begin to understand the reason for our living." ......................................................................................


ON THE CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 


He asked a woman how long a honeymoon should be, a month as it was supposed to be, or a weekend as it was then fashionable. 

"A woman takes life too seriously. It is a serious affair to most of us, the Lord knows. That is why it is well not to take it more seriously than need be."

" ... In old strong days men faced real dangers, real troubles every hour; they had no time to cry. Death and disaster stood ever at the door. Men were contemptuous of them. Now in each snug protected villa we set to work to make wounds out of scratches. Every head-ache becomes an agony, every heart-ache a tragedy. It took a murdered father, a drowned sweetheart, a dishonoured mother, a ghost, and a slaughtered Prime Minister to produce the emotions in Hamlet that a modern minor poet obtains from a chorus girl's frown, or a temporary slump on the Stock Exchange. ... "

He asked a man the same question about the ideal duration of a honeymoon. 

""My dear boy," he replied; "take my advice, if ever you get married, arrange it so that the honeymoon shall only last a week, and let it be a bustling week into the bargain. Take a Cook's circular tour. Get married on the Saturday morning, cut the breakfast and all that foolishness, and catch the eleven-ten from Charing Cross to Paris. Take her up the Eiffel Tower on Sunday. Lunch at Fontainebleau. Dine at the Maison Doree, and show her the Moulin Rouge in the evening. Take the night train for Lucerne. Devote Monday and Tuesday to doing Switzerland, and get into Rome by Thursday morning, taking the Italian lakes en route. On Friday cross to Marseilles, and from there push along to Monte Carlo. Let her have a flutter at the tables. Start early Saturday morning for Spain, cross the Pyrenees on mules, and rest at Bordeaux on Sunday. Get back to Paris on Monday (Monday is always a good day for the opera), and on Tuesday evening you will be at home, and glad to get there. Don't give her time to criticize you until she has got used to you. No man will bear unprotected exposure to a young girl's eyes. The honeymoon is the matrimonial microscope. Wobble it. Confuse it with many objects. Cloud it with other interests. Don't sit still to be examined. Besides, remember that a man always appears at his best when active, and a woman at her worst. Bustle her, my dear boy, bustle her: I don't care who she may be. Give her plenty of luggage to look after; make her catch trains. Let her see the average husband sprawling comfortably over the railway cushions, while his wife has to sit bolt upright in the corner left to her. Let her hear how other men swear. Let her smell other men's tobacco. Hurry up, and get her accustomed quickly to the sight of mankind. Then she will be less surprised and shocked as she grows to know you. One of the best fellows I ever knew spoilt his married life beyond repair by a long quiet honeymoon. ... After the first day or two he grew tired of talking nonsense, and she of listening to it (it sounded nonsense now they could speak it aloud; they had fancied it poetry when they had had to whisper it); and having no other subject, as yet, of common interest, they would sit and stare in front of them in silence. ... " ......................................................................................


ON THE MINDING OF OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS 


"I believe all the shop-keepers in London save their old stock to palm it off on me at Christmas time."

"Ah, me! how charming and how beautiful "artistes" were in those golden days! Whence have they vanished? Ladies in blue tights and flaxen hair dance before my eyes to-day, but move me not, unless it be towards boredom."

"We abolished, I remember, capital punishment and war; we were excellent young men at heart. Christmas we reformed altogether, along with Bank Holidays, by a majority of twelve. I never recollect any proposal to abolish anything ever being lost when put to the vote. There were few things that we "Stormy Petrels" did not abolish."

Trust the author to give, after all the stories about troubles and irritation caused by Xmas, one about why the festival is needed for human hearts - and he does it twice!  ......................................................................................


ON THE TIME WASTED IN LOOKING BEFORE ONE LEAPS 


His descriptions about women finding their money seem based on an entirely forgotten era of women putting purses, and much more, not only in skirt pockets, but the pockets being not only hard to locate, and behind, so they sat on them! 

"But it was the thought of more serious matters that lured me into reflections concerning the over-carefulness of women. It is a theory of mine—wrong possibly; indeed I have so been informed—that we pick our way through life with too much care. We are for ever looking down upon the ground. Maybe, we do avoid a stumble or two over a stone or a brier, but also we miss the blue of the sky, the glory of the hills. These books that good men write, telling us that what they call "success" in life depends on our flinging aside our youth and wasting our manhood in order that we may have the means when we are eighty of spending a rollicking old age, annoy me. We save all our lives to invest in a South Sea Bubble; and in skimping and scheming, we have grown mean, and narrow, and hard. We will put off the gathering of the roses till tomorrow, to-day it shall be all work, all bargain-driving, all plotting. Lo, when to-morrow comes, the roses are blown; nor do we care for roses, idle things of small marketable value; cabbages are more to our fancy by the time to-morrow comes."

"I have been told of a young man, who chose his wife with excellent care. Said he to himself, very wisely, "In the selection of a wife a man cannot be too circumspect." He convinced himself that the girl was everything a helpmate should be. She had every virtue that could be expected in a woman, no faults, but such as are inseparable from a woman. Speaking practically, she was perfection. He married her, and found she was all he had thought her. Only one thing could he urge against her—that he did not like her. And that, of course, was not her fault." ......................................................................................


ON THE NOBILITY OF OURSELVES 


"Few things had more terrors for me, when a child, than Heaven—as pictured for me by certain of the good folks round about me. I was told that if I were a good lad, kept my hair tidy, and did not tease the cat, I would probably, when I died, go to a place where all day long I would sit still and sing hymns. (Think of it! as reward to a healthy boy for being good.)"

When he says " ... your culture quite Bostonian", which Boston dies the author refer to, or is it The Bostonians he alludes to?  ......................................................................................


ON THE MOTHERLINESS OF MAN 


About rookeries, society and society events.

"The tree withers and you clear the ground, thankful if out of its dead limbs you can make good firewood; but its spirit, its life, is in fifty saplings. The tree dies not, it changes."
......................................................................................


ON THE INADVISABILITY OF FOLLOWING ADVICE 


"I've seen a drunken woman, and they're worse. But a drunken Welsh pony I never want to have anything more to do with so long as I live."

And the author tells you why, in detail. 

"It would be the best of all possible worlds if everybody would only follow our advice."

Hilarious recounting about theatre and audience of yore. 

"I recollect witnessing the production of a very blood-curdling melodrama at, I think, the old Queen's Theatre. The heroine had been given by the author a quite unnecessary amount of conversation, so we considered. The woman, whenever she appeared on the stage, talked by the yard; she could not do a simple little thing like cursing the Villain under about twenty lines. When the hero asked her if she loved him she stood up and made a speech about it that lasted three minutes by the watch. One dreaded to see her open her mouth. In the Third Act, somebody got hold of her and shut her up in a dungeon. He was not a nice man, speaking generally, but we felt he was the man for the situation, and the house cheered him to the echo. We flattered ourselves we had got rid of her for the rest of the evening. Then some fool of a turnkey came along, and she appealed to him, through the grating, to let her out for a few minutes. The turnkey, a good but soft-hearted man, hesitated. 

""Don't you do it," shouted one earnest Student of the Drama, from the Gallery; "she's all right. Keep her there!" 

"The old idiot paid no attention to our advice; he argued the matter to himself. "'Tis but a trifling request," he remarked; "and it will make her happy." 

""Yes, but what about us?" replied the same voice from the Gallery. "You don't know her. You've only just come on; we've been listening to her all the evening. She's quiet now, you let her be." 

""Oh, let me out, if only for one moment!" shrieked the poor woman. "I have something that I must say to my child." 

""Write it on a bit of paper, and pass it out," suggested a voice from the Pit. "We'll see that he gets it." 

""Shall I keep a mother from her dying child?" mused the turnkey. "No, it would be inhuman." 

""No, it wouldn't," persisted the voice of the Pit; "not in this instance. It's too much talk that has made the poor child ill." 

"The turnkey would not be guided by us. He opened the cell door amidst the execrations of the whole house. She talked to her child for about five minutes, at the end of which time it died. 

""Ah, he is dead!" shrieked the distressed parent. 

""Lucky beggar!" was the unsympathetic rejoinder of the house."

Summary:-

"Is real wealth so unevenly distributed as we think?"

"What IS success in life?"
......................................................................................


ON THE PLAYING OF MARCHES AT THE FUNERALS OF MARIONETTES


Eulogy for a child's doll, torn by a dog. 

"What grand acting parts they are, these characters we write for ourselves alone in our dressing-rooms. We are always brave and noble—wicked sometimes, but if so, in a great, high-minded way; never in a mean or little way." .....................................................................................
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July 29, 2020 - August 02, 2020

1899 Hurst and Blackett edition

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