They and I, by Jerome K. Jerome.

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They and I

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Having just begun and read the first chapter, not only very hilarious but also very relaxing, as one proceeds to the next, one wonders suddenly if the BBC sitcom Outnumbered was inspired by this work of Jerome K. Jerome written close to a century before it aired. Not that it's a similarityof dialogues or situations or anything that literal, but it's the general theme of a parent dealing with children and not quite dominating or ordering them about, or even being master of the situation, and yet not feeling a failure, but quite human. 

Soon, though, the doubt is dispelled - this isn't exactly about the theme familiar in Outnumbered, although the germ, or a seed, is there. One could say it's about the family shifting from very much city to quite country, but this book is really the quintessential Jerome K. Jerome as he wanders into whatever comes to mind, and is so hilarious that one can only split sides and relax before one knows it. 

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The protagonist seems to be an author, and one wonders if this is autobiographical at all. He's just bought a house away from city, after having looked at several in various districts from Dorset to Essex, in vicinity of Bristol channel, and the older daughter Robina is enthusiastic about a country life for the three of them, herself and her siblings Dick and Veronica. 

Off they go to begin the idyllic country life. 

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"It was the cow that woke me the first morning. I did not know it was our cow—not at the time. I didn't know we had a cow. I looked at my watch; it was half-past two. ... "

" ... I was on the point of dozing off again when a pair of pigeons settled on the window-sill and began to coo. It is a pretty sound when you are in the mood for it. I wrote a poem once—a simple thing, but instinct with longing—while sitting under a tree and listening to the cooing of a pigeon. But that was in the afternoon. My only longing now was for a gun. Three times I got out of bed and "shoo'd" them away. The third time I remained by the window till I had got it firmly into their heads that I really did not want them. My behaviour on the former two occasions they had evidently judged to be mere playfulness. I had just got back to bed again when an owl began to screech. That is another sound I used to think attractive—so weird, so mysterious. It is Swinburne, I think, who says that you never get the desired one and the time and the place all right together. If the beloved one is with you, it is the wrong place or at the wrong time; and if the time and the place happen to be right, then it is the party that is wrong. The owl was all right: I like owls. The place was all right. He had struck the wrong time, that was all. Eleven o'clock at night, when you can't see him, and naturally feel that you want to, is the proper time for an owl. Perched on the roof of a cow-shed in the early dawn he looks silly. He clung there, flapping his wings and screeching at the top of his voice. What it was he wanted I am sure I don't know; and anyhow it didn't seem the way to get it. He came to this conclusion himself at the end of twenty minutes, and shut himself up and went home. I thought I was going to have at last some peace, when a corncrake—a creature upon whom Nature has bestowed a song like to the tearing of calico-sheets mingled with the sharpening of saws—settled somewhere in the garden and set to work to praise its Maker according to its lights. I have a friend, a poet, who lives just off the Strand, and spends his evenings at the Garrick Club. He writes occasional verse for the evening papers, and talks about the "silent country, drowsy with the weight of languors." One of these times I'll lure him down for a Saturday to Monday and let him find out what the country really is—let him hear it. He is becoming too much of a dreamer: it will do him good, wake him up a bit. The corncrake after awhile stopped quite suddenly with a jerk, and for quite five minutes there was silence. 

""If this continues for another five," I said to myself, "I'll be asleep." I felt it coming over me. I had hardly murmured the words when the cow turned up again. I should say she had been somewhere and had had a drink. She was in better voice than ever.

"It occurred to me that this would be an opportunity to make a few notes on the sunrise. The literary man is looked to for occasional description of the sunrise. The earnest reader who has heard about this sunrise thirsts for full particulars. Myself, for purposes of observation, I have generally chosen December or the early part of January. But one never knows. Maybe one of these days I'll want a summer sunrise, with birds and dew-besprinkled flowers: it goes well with the rustic heroine, the miller's daughter, or the girl who brings up chickens and has dreams. I met a brother author once at seven o'clock in the morning in Kensington Gardens. He looked half asleep and so disagreeable that I hesitated for awhile to speak to him: he is a man that as a rule breakfasts at eleven. But I summoned my courage and accosted him. 

""This is early for you," I said. 

""It's early for anyone but a born fool," he answered. 

""What's the matter?" I asked. "Can't you sleep?" 

""Can't I sleep?" he retorted indignantly. "Why, I daren't sit down upon a seat, I daren't lean up against a tree. If I did I'd be asleep in half a second." 

""What's the idea?" I persisted. "Been reading Smiles's 'Self Help and the Secret of Success'? Don't be absurd," I advised him. "You'll be going to Sunday school next and keeping a diary. You have left it too late: we don't reform at forty. Go home and go to bed." I could see he was doing himself no good. 

""I'm going to bed," he answered, "I'm going to bed for a month when I've finished this confounded novel that I'm on. Take my advice," he said—he laid his hand upon my shoulder—"Never choose a colonial girl for your heroine. At our age it is simple madness.""

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"Young Bute told me that a friend of his, a well-to-do young fellow, who lived in Piccadilly, had had the whim to make his flat the reproduction of a Roman villa. There were of course no fires, the rooms were warmed by hot air from the kitchen. They had a cheerless aspect on a November afternoon, and nobody knew exactly where to sit. Light was obtained in the evening from Grecian lamps, which made it easy to understand why the ancient Athenians, as a rule, went to bed early. You dined sprawling on a couch. This was no doubt practicable when you took your plate into your hand and fed yourself with your fingers; but with a knife and fork the meal had all the advantages of a hot picnic. You did not feel luxurious or even wicked: you only felt nervous about your clothes. The thing lacked completeness. He could not expect his friends to come to him in Roman togas, and even his own man declined firmly to wear the costume of a Roman slave. The compromise was unsatisfactory, even from the purely pictorial point of view. You cannot be a Roman patrician of the time of Antoninus when you happen to live in Piccadilly at the opening of the twentieth century. All you can do is to make your friends uncomfortable and spoil their dinner for them. Young Bute said that, so far as he was concerned, he would always rather have spent the evening with his little nephews and nieces, playing at horses; it seemed to him a more sensible game."

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"Algy is four; till last year he was always called the baby. Now, of course, there is no excuse; but the name still clings to him in spite of his indignant protestations. Father called upstairs to him the other day: 'Baby, bring me down my gaiters.' He walked straight up to the cradle and woke up the baby. 'Get up,' I heard him say—I was just outside the door—'and take your father down his gaiters. Don't you hear him calling you?' He is a droll little fellow. Father took him to Oxford last Saturday. He is small for his age. The ticket- collector, quite contented, threw him a glance, and merely as a matter of form asked if he was under three. 'No,' he shouted before father could reply; 'I 'sists on being honest. I'se four.' It is father's pet phrase.""

"Father is trying. He loves experiments, and a woman hates experiments. Last year it was bare feet. I daresay it is healthier. But children who have been about in bare feet all the morning—well, it isn't pleasant when they sit down to lunch; I don't care what you say. You can't be always washing. He is so unpractical. He was quite angry with mother and myself because we wouldn't. And a man in bare feet looks so ridiculous. This summer it is short hair and no hats; and Sally had such pretty hair. Next year it will be sabots or turbans— something or other suggesting the idea that we've lately escaped from a fair. On Mondays and Thursdays we talk French. We have got a French nurse; and those are the only days in the week on which she doesn't understand a word that's said to her. We can none of us understand father, and that makes him furious. He won't say it in English; he makes a note of it, meaning to tell us on Tuesday or Friday, and then, of course, he forgets, and wonders why we haven't done it. He's the dearest fellow alive. When I think of him as a big boy, then he is charming, and if he really were only a big boy there are times when I would shake him and feel better for it.""

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Chapter VI begins lackadaisical and develops - rather, meanders a la Jerome K. Jerome - into bordering hilarious. Robins and Veronica say they've lunched, and there is only a little left for father and son, so the latter throws a fit, asking where it all went, since he'd seen the sisters deal with preparations. It's explained when Robina asks him to bring back half a dozen men of various trades to deal with the disaster in kitchen. 

""He is going to turn over a new leaf;" said Robina: 

""I am sure he will make an excellent farmer." "I did not want a farmer," I explained; "I wanted a Prime Minister. Children, Robina, are very disappointing. Veronica is all wrong. I like a mischievous child. I like reading stories of mischievous children: they amuse me. But not the child who puts a pound of gunpowder into a red-hot fire, and escapes with her life by a miracle.""

Next chapter or two keep the reader simmering at bordering hilarious. Robina convinced her father to go to town for a few days, and Veronica walked with him to the station. 

"The trouble about arguing with children is that they will argue too."

Robina wrote:-

""Wildly exaggerated accounts of the affair are flying round the neighbourhood; and my chief fear is that Veronica may discover she is a local celebrity. Your sudden disappearance is supposed to have been heavenward. An old farm labourer who saw you pass on your way to the station speaks of you as 'the ghost of the poor gentleman himself;' and fragments of clothing found anywhere within a radius of two miles are being preserved, I am told, as specimens of your remains. Boots would appear to have been your chief apparel. Seven pairs have already been collected from the surrounding ditches. Among the more public-spirited there is talk of using you to start a local museum.""

The author uses Dick, the young son of the protagonist, though, for expounding his own views.

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"Of course we made the usual mistake: they talked to me about books and plays, and I gave them my views on agriculture and cub-hunting. I'm not quite sure what fool it was who described a bore as a man who talked about himself. As a matter of fact it is the only subject the average man knows sufficiently well to make interesting. There's a man I know; he makes a fortune out of a patent food for infants. He began life as a dairy farmer, and hit upon it quite by accident. When he talks about the humours of company promoting and the tricks of the advertising agent he is amusing. I have sat at his table, when he was a bachelor, and listened to him by the hour with enjoyment. The mistake he made was marrying a broad-minded, cultured woman, who ruined him— conversationally, I mean. He is now well-informed and tiresome on most topics. That is why actors and actresses are always such delightful company: they are not ashamed to talk about themselves. I remember a dinner-party once: our host was one of the best-known barristers in London. A famous lady novelist sat on his right, and a scientist of world-wide reputation had the place of honour next our hostess, who herself had written a history of the struggle for nationality in South America that serves as an authority to all the Foreign Offices in Europe. Among the remaining guests were a bishop, the editor-in-chief of a London daily newspaper, a man who knew the interior of China as well as most men know their own club, a Russian revolutionist just escaped from Siberia, a leading dramatist, a Cabinet Minister, and a poet whose name is a household word wherever the English tongue is spoken. And for two hours we sat and listened to a wicked-looking little woman who from the boards of a Bowery music-hall had worked her way up to the position of a star in musical comedy. Education, as she observed herself without regret, had not been compulsory throughout the waterside district of Chicago in her young days; and, compelled to earn her own living from the age of thirteen, opportunity for supplying the original deficiency had been wanting. But she knew her subject, which was Herself—her experiences, her reminiscences: and bad sense enough to stick to it. Until the moment when she took "the liberty of chipping in," to use her own expression, the amount of twaddle talked had been appalling. The bishop had told us all he had learnt about China during a visit to San Francisco, while the man who had spent the last twenty years of his life in the country was busy explaining his views on the subject of the English drama. Our hostess had been endeavouring to make the scientist feel at home by talking to him about radium. The dramatist had explained at some length his views of the crisis in Russia. The poet had quite spoilt his dinner trying to suggest to the Cabinet Minister new sources of taxation. The Russian revolutionist had told us what ought to have been a funny story about a duck; and the lady novelist and the Cabinet Minister had discussed Christian Science for a quarter of an hour, each under the mistaken impression that the other one was a believer in it. The editor had been explaining the attitude of the Church towards the New Theology; and our host, one of the wittiest men at the Bar, had been talking chiefly to the butler. The relief of listening to anybody talking about something they knew was like finding a match-box to a man who has been barking his shins in the dark. For the rest of the dinner we clung to her."

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Chapter X, the conversation between Robina and father, really good! 

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The protagonist worries about his son Dick losing Janie, having until then worried about whom Dick would bring into the family, and recalls the women he had himself fortunately did lose.

"What is one to do? There are days in springtime when a young man ought not to be allowed outside the house. Thank Heaven and Convention it is not the girls who propose! Few women, who would choose the right moment to put their hands upon a young man's shoulders, and, looking into his eyes, ask him to marry them next week, would receive No for an answer. It is only our shyness that saves us."

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Nice finish. 

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August 09, 2020 - August 17, 2020.

This etext was prepared 

by David Price, email 

ccx074@coventry.ac.uk 

from the 1909 

Bernhard Tauchnitz edition.

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Kilmeny of the Orchard; by L. M. Montgomery.

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Kilmeny of the Orchard
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Here we seem to depart again from the characters familiar so far in these stories, whether of the Anne series or the King clan of the Story Girl volumes. Here we have a bright young man Eric Marshall, graduating from Queenslea College with a degree in arts, eager to join his father in Marshall & Company, expand the company's department store business, and big dreams for it. But his friend is unwell and Eric must take his place teaching school in Lindsay, PE, for the rest of the term after the spring vacation. He liked it more than he thought, despite the lack of excitement. 

"The Williamson place, where Eric boarded , was on the crest of the succeeding hill. He liked it as well as Larry West had prophesied that he would. The Williamsons, as well as the rest of the Lindsay people, took it for granted that he was a poor college student working his way through as Larry West had been doing. Eric did not disturb this belief, although he said nothing to contribute to it."

Eric went out one evening for a walk, and having walked through woods, came upon a neglected orchard. He walked through and flopped down on grass at the end under lilacs, and suddenly heard music enchanting, and discovered a girl on a bench under a lilac playing violin. He was struck with her beauty, but when she noticed him she was terrified and ran away. He couldn't get her out of his mind, to his chagrin, and looked for her in the orchard and in church, without success. Finally he asked Mrs Williamson. 

""I suppose it must have been Kilmeny Gordon, Master." 

""Kilmeny Gordon? Do you mean the niece of Thomas Gordon of whom your husband spoke?" 

""Yes." 

""I can hardly believe that the girl I saw can be a member of Thomas Gordon's family." 

""Well, if it wasn't Kilmeny Gordon I don't know who it could have been. There is no other house near that orchard and I've heard she plays the violin. If it was Kilmeny you've seen what very few people in Lindsay have ever seen, Master. And those few have never seen her close by. I have never laid eyes on her myself. It's no wonder she ran away, poor girl. She isn't used to seeing strangers." 

""I'm rather glad if that was the sole reason of her flight," said Eric. "I admit I didn't like to see any girl so frightened of me as she appeared to be. She was as white as paper, and so terrified that she never uttered a word, but fled like a deer to cover." 

""Well, she couldn't have spoken a word in any case," said Mrs. Williamson quietly. "Kilmeny Gordon is dumb.""

Kilmeny could hear and understand, but not speak, said Mrs Williamson. She told him the history of her mother, Margaret Gordon, her close friend and classmate, and what she knew about Kilmeny, whom nobody in Lindsay had seen outside the Gordon family, except Eric. He went to the orchard again, and saw her, and this time had a conversation with her, her using a slate hung around her waist. She promised to play for him next day, and he asked her for some of the June lilies - white narcissus -  that she'd been picking. 

"When she came to him, radiant, her hands full of the lilies, a couplet from a favourite poem darted into his head— 

""A blossom vermeil white 

"That lightly breaks a faded flower sheath, 

"Here, by God's rood, is the one maid for me.""

"Eric discovered that she had read a great deal of poetry and history, and a few books of biography and travel. She did not know what a novel meant and had never heard of one. Curiously enough, she was well informed regarding politics and current events, from the weekly paper for which her uncle subscribed."

They went on meeting in the orchard, unþil one day Mrs Williamson confronted Eric and told him he shouldn't, because Kilmeny wasn't used to the world and might care for him, while he was unlikely to marry her. 

"He was face to face with the knowledge that he loved Kilmeny Gordon with the love that comes but once, and is for all time. He wondered how he could have been so long blind to it. He knew that he must have loved her ever since their first meeting that May evening in the old orchard.

"And he knew that he must choose between two alternatives— either he must never go to the orchard again, or he must go as an avowed lover to woo him a wife."
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Neil Gordon, the Italian orphan brought up by Gordon family as their own, spied on their last meeting in the orchard. He informed her uncle and aunt Thomas and Janet, and quarrelled with Eric next day. Eric dealt with him quietly as an adult with a boy, went to meet the Gordon family, and convinced them about his serious and honourable intentions, winning their approval to court Kilmeny to win her. 

They had happy time until Kilmeny realised she loved him; she was distant, and when Eric confessed his love and proposed, she refused because she couldn't speak. He couldn't believe it, and tried to make her change her mind. 

"He did not understand that it was the very intensity of her love which gave her the strength to resist his pleading, where a more shallow affection might have yielded. It held her back unflinchingly from doing him what she believed to be a wrong."

But Eric spoke with Janet. They discussed about her inability to speak, and Eric proposed Kilmeny being examined by David Baker. 

"Janet plainly had no faith in the possibility of anything being done for Kilmeny. But a rosy glow of hope flashed over Kilmeny's face when Eric told her what he meant to do. 

""Oh, do you think he can make me speak?" she wrote eagerly. 

""I don't know, Kilmeny. I hope that he can, and I know he will do all that mortal skill can do. If he can remove your defect will you promise to marry me, dearest?" 

"She nodded. The grave little motion had the solemnity of a sacred promise. 

""Yes," she wrote, "when I can speak like other women I will marry you.""

David Baker arrived, and having won the Williamson household over, chided Eric in private. Eric told him hed but one argument. 

"The next morning Eric took David up to the Gordon homestead. As they approached the old orchard a strain of music came floating through the resinous morning arcades of the spruce wood— a wild, sorrowful, appealing cry, full of indescribable pathos, yet marvellously sweet. 

""What is that?" exclaimed David, starting. 

""That is Kilmeny playing on her violin," answered Eric. "She has great talent in that respect and improvises wonderful melodies." 

"When they reached the orchard Kilmeny rose from the old bench to meet them, her lovely luminous eyes distended, her face flushed with the excitement of mingled hope and fear. 

""Oh, ye gods!" muttered David helplessly."

Having examined her, David told Eric that there was nothing wrong in her vocal instruments, and it was psychological; it needed a great sudden desire for her to get over a barrier and say a word, that was all. But there was nothing he could do. David left, and Kilmeny refused to see Eric then on. Thomas advised him to leave Lindsay, however much they wanted to see him because they loved him. 

Eric went to the orchard without hope when the school was closed due to a local funeral, and saw Neil mending a fence. He felt pity for him. He walked through and sat, and was unaware of steps, and didn't know Kilmeny was coming. 

"Kilmeny walked through the lane slowly and absently like a woman in a dream. When she came to the gap in the fence where the lane ran into the orchard she lifted her wan, drooping face and saw Eric, sitting in the shadow of the wood at the other side of the orchard with his bowed head in his hands. She stopped quickly and the blood rushed wildly over her face. 

"The next moment it ebbed, leaving her white as marble. Horror filled her eyes,— blank, deadly horror, as the livid shadow of a cloud might fill two blue pools. 

"Behind Eric Neil Gordon was standing tense, crouched, murderous. Even at that distance Kilmeny saw the look on his face, saw what he held in his hand, and realized in one agonized flash of comprehension what it meant. 

"All this photographed itself in her brain in an instant. She knew that by the time she could run across the orchard to warn Eric by a touch it would be too late. Yet she must warn him— she must—she MUST! A mighty surge of desire seemed to rise up within her and overwhelm her like a wave of the sea,— a surge that swept everything before it in an irresistible flood. As Neil Gordon swiftly and vindictively, with the face of a demon, lifted the axe he held in his hand, Kilmeny sprang forward through the gap. 

""Eric, Eric, look behind you— look behind you!" 

"Eric started up, confused, bewildered, as the voice came shrieking across the orchard. He did not in the least realize that it was Kilmeny who had called to him, but he instinctively obeyed the command. 

"He wheeled around and saw Neil Gordon, who was looking, not at him, but past him at Kilmeny. The Italian boy's face was ashen and his eyes were filled with terror and incredulity, as if he had been checked in his murderous purpose by some supernatural interposition. The axe, lying at his feet where he had dropped it in his unutterable consternation on hearing Kilmeny's cry, told the whole tale. But before Eric could utter a word Neil turned, with a cry more like that of an animal than a human being, and fled like a hunted creature into the shadow of the spruce wood. 

"A moment later Kilmeny , her lovely face dewed with tears and sunned over with smiles, flung herself on Eric's breast. 

""Oh, Eric, I can speak,— I can speak! Oh, it is so wonderful! Eric, I love you— I love you!""

They arranged the wedding for spring, and Eric wrote his father, who promptly arrived. He was just as taken with the Williamson household and the Gordons, and floored by Kilmeny, he welcomed her into the family. 
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August 05, 2020 - August 10, 2020.
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Tommy & Co. by Jerome K. Jerome.

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Tommy & Co.

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A story divided into a collection, or a collection of stories connected by the characters and events. 

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STORY THE FIRST—Peter Hope plans his Prospectus

Promising beginning. 

"“But, my good—” Mr. Peter Hope, checking himself, sought again the assistance of his glasses. The glasses being unable to decide the point, their owner had to put the question bluntly: 

"“Are you a boy or a girl?” 

"“I dunno.” 

"“You don’t know!” 

"“What’s the difference?” 

"Mr. Peter Hope stood up, and taking the strange figure by the shoulders, turned it round slowly twice, apparently under the impression that the process might afford to him some clue. But it did not. 

"“What is your name?”

"“Tommy.”

"“Tommy what?”

"“Anything you like. I dunno. I’ve had so many of ’em.”

"“What do you want? What have you come for?” 

"“You’re Mr. Hope, ain’t you, second floor, 16, Gough Square?” 

"“That is my name.” 

"“You want somebody to do for you?” 

"“You mean a housekeeper!” 

"“Didn’t say anything about housekeeper.  Said you wanted somebody to do for you—cook and clean the place up. Heard ’em talking about it in the shop this afternoon. Old lady in green bonnet was asking Mother Hammond if she knew of anyone.”"

"“I’d do for you all right,” persisted Tommy. “You give me my grub and a shake-down and, say, sixpence a week, and I’ll grumble less than most of ’em.”"

Quite a surprise, this first story, from this author - there is humour, of course, but only as a pinch of salt in a dish that isn't mainly salty, and has every other taste too. What's more, he doesn't ramble! Very unlike the Jerome K. Jerome one is used to! 
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STORY THE SECOND—William Clodd appoints himself Managing Director

Mrs. Postwhistle features prominently in this one, she's a character from the first story. Perhaps he lodged with Mrs. Postwhistle? The latter might be true, but now the journalist Mr Peter Hope appears halfway through, so it'd seem that the stories are connected. This one is about a lodger whom Mrs Postwhistle got rid of, despite his paying regularly and not being trouble, and Mr Clodd took him in. 

"“There’s no harm in him,” asserted Mr. Clodd, talking the matter over with one Mr. Peter Hope, journalist, of Gough Square. “He’s just a bit dotty, same as you or I might get with nothing to do and all day long to do it in.  Kid’s play, that’s all it is. The best plan, I find, is to treat it as a game and take a hand in it. Last week he wanted to be a lion. I could see that was going to be awkward, he roaring for raw meat and thinking to prowl about the house at night. Well, I didn’t nag him—that’s no good.  I just got a gun and shot him. He’s a duck now, and I’m trying to keep him one: sits for an hour beside his bath on three china eggs I’ve bought him. Wish some of the sane ones were as little trouble.”"

"“Clodd’s a good sort—a good sort,” said Peter Hope, who, having in his time lived much alone, had fallen into the habit of speaking his thoughts aloud; “but he’s not the man to waste his time. I wonder.”"

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STORY THE THIRD—Grindley Junior drops into the Position of Publisher

A rather fun love story between children who met young but separated because his father became rich and didn't wish to know hers, an old friend, any longer. 

"A serious little virgin, Miss Appleyard’s ambition was to help the human race. What more useful work could have come to her hand than the raising of this poor but intelligent young grocer’s assistant unto the knowledge and the love of higher things. That Grindley junior happened to be an exceedingly good-looking and charming young grocer’s assistant had nothing to do with the matter, so Miss Appleyard would have informed you. In her own reasoning she was convinced that her interest in him would have been the same had he been the least attractive of his sex. That there could be danger in such relationship never occurred to her.

"Miss Appleyard, a convinced Radical, could not conceive the possibility of a grocer’s assistant regarding the daughter of a well-to-do printer in any other light than that of a graciously condescending patron. That there could be danger to herself! you would have been sorry you had suggested the idea. The expression of lofty scorn would have made you feel yourself contemptible."

Superb story, in very much Jerome K. Jerome oeuvre. 

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STORY THE FOURTH—Miss Ramsbotham gives her Services

She was intelligent and had a career, and found it difficult to fall in love herself, until in her early thirties she fell for a selfish brute who was pretty, and he was tolerated because of her. He fell in love with a young pretty girl without education or sense, in turn, and was honest. 

This story, Jerome K. Jerome reminds one of his somewhat contemporary W. Somerset Maugham, but is less worldly or cynical. It's about the human nature and unexpected turns that the similarity is fleetingly felt. 

"“If you had fallen in love with the right man,” had said Susan Fossett, “those ideas would not have come to you.” 

"“I know,” said Miss Ramsbotham.  “He will have to like me thin and in these clothes, just because I am nice, and good company, and helpful.  That is the man I am waiting for.” 

"He never came along.  A charming, bright-eyed, white-haired lady occupies alone a little flat in the Marylebone Road, looks in occasionally at the Writers’ Club.  She is still Miss Ramsbotham."

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STORY THE FIFTH—Joey Loveredge agrees—on certain terms—to join the Company

Here it's reverse of the previous story, to begin with - Joey Loveredge is friendly with everyone, but seems unlikely to marry, until he suddenly does in his forties; but no one can meet his wife! Turns out it's because she's perfect except for her being snobbish and wishing to keep company only with those connected to titles. Then someone hits upon the idea of faking it, and Joey's set begins to be invited one by one, each pretending to be someone from the peerage! Only, Mrs Loveredge one day attends a garden party alone, meets Lady Mary Sutton and invites her! 

The hilarious results couldn't have been left to a better author than Jerome K. Jerome. 
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STORY THE SIXTH—“The Babe” applies for Shares

Good taste vs circulation, honesty vs profits from advertisements, ..... and although everyone agrees that a female might get through to get the advertisement, Tommy isn't allowed to do it! But there's an admirer who finds out, and being irritated about being not considered manly enough by males generally, has a brilliant idea! 

The rest defies any possible anticipation by the reader, and is a story quite on par with the best of Jerome K. Jerome. 
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STORY THE SEVENTH—Dick Danvers presents his Petition

The first couple of pages of dialogue between various older males debating about Tommy at eighteen, truly hilarious. As usual with this set, the story turns far more interesting. Lovely end. 
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August 06, 2020 - August 09, 2020.

Transcribed from the 

1904 

Hutchinson and Co. edition 

by David Price, 

email ccx074@pglaf.org

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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.
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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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