 This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Czech Chris, London, UK The Idol Thoughts of an Idol Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome Section 7 On the weather. Things do go so contrary like with me. I wanted to hit upon an especially novel out of the way subject for one of these articles. I will write one paper about something altogether new, I said to myself, something that nobody else has ever written or talked about before, and then I can have it all my own way. And I went about for days trying to think of something of this kind, and I couldn't. Mrs. Cutting, our charwoman, came yesterday. I don't mind mentioning her name because I know she will not see this book. She would not look at such a frivolous publication. She never reads anything but the Bible and Lloyd's weekly news. All other literature she considers unnecessary and sinful. She said, Lo, sir, you do look worried. I said, Mrs. Cutting, I am trying to think of a subject, the discussion of which will come upon the world in the nature of a startler, some subject upon which no previous human being has ever said a word, some subject that will attract by its novelty, invigorate by its surprising freshness. She laughed, and said, I was a funny gentleman. That's my look again. When I make serious observations, people chuckle. When I attempt to joke, nobody sees it. I had a beautiful one last week. I thought it so good, and I worked it up and brought it in artfully at a dinner party. I forget how exactly, but we had been talking about the attitude of Shakespeare toward the Reformation, and I said something, and immediately added, Ah, that reminds me, such a funny thing happened the other day in Whitechapel. Oh, said they, what was that? Oh, to us awfully funny, I replied, beginning to giggle myself. It will make you raw! And I told it them. There was dead silence when I finished. And it was one of those long jokes, too. And then, at last, somebody said, And that was the joke? I assured them that it was. And they were very polite, and took my word for it. All but one old gentleman at the other end of the table, who wanted to know which was the joke, what he said to her, or what she said to him. And we argued it out. Some people are too much the other way. I knew a fellow once, whose natural tendency to laugh at everything was so strong, that if you wanted to talk seriously to him, you had to explain beforehand that what you were going to say would not be amusing. Unless you got him to clearly understand this, he would go off into fits of merriment over every word you uttered. I have known him on being asked the time, stop short in the middle of the road, slap his leg and burst into a roar of laughter. One never dared say anything really funny to that man. A good joke would have killed him on the spot. In the present instance, I vehemently repudiated the accusation of frivolity, and pressed Mrs. Cutting for practical ideas. She then became thoughtful and hazarded samplers, saying that she never heard them spoken much of now, and that they used to be all the rage when she was a girl. I declined samplers, and begged her to think again. She pondered a long while with a tea-tree in her hands, and at last suggested the weather, which she was sure had been most trying of late. And ever since that idiotic suggestion I have been unable to get the weather out of my thoughts, or anything else in. It certainly is most wretched weather. At all events it is so now at the time I am writing. And if it isn't particularly unpleasant when I come to be read, it soon will be. It always is wretched weather according to us. The weather is like the government, always in the wrong. In summer time we say it is stifling. In winter that it is killing. In spring and autumn we find fault with it for being neither one thing nor the other, and wish it would make up its mind. If it is fine we say the country is being ruined for want of rain. If it does rain we pray for fine weather. If December passes without snow we indignantly demand to know what has become of our good old fashioned winters, and talk as if we had been cheated out of something we had bought and paid for. And when it does snow our language is a disgrace to a Christian nation. We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself. If that cannot be arranged we would rather do without it all together. Yet I think it is only to us in cities that all weather is so unwelcome. In her own home, the country, nature is sweet in all her moods. What can be more beautiful than the snow, falling big with mystery in silent softness, decking the fields and trees with white as if for a fairy wedding? And how delightful is a walk when the frozen ground rings beneath our swinging tread, when our blood tingles in the rare keen air, and the sheep-dogs' distant bark and children's laughter peels faintly clear like alpine bells across the open hills, and then skating, scudding with wings of steel across the swaying ice, making whoring music as we fly. And oh how dainty is spring, nature at sweet eighteen! When the little hopeful leaves peep out so fresh and green, so pure and bright, like young lives pushing shyly out into the bustling world, when the fruit-tree blossoms, pink and white, like village maidens in their Sunday frocks, hide each whitewashed cottage in a cloud of fragile splendour, and the cuckoo's note upon the breeze is wafted through the woods, and summer with its deep dark green and drowsy hum, when the raindrops whisper solemn secrets to the listening leaves, and the twilight lingers in the lanes. And autumn, ah, how sadly fair, with its golden glow and the dying grandeur of its tinted woods, its blood-red sunsets and its ghostly evening mists, with its busy murmur of reapers, and its laden orchards, and the calling of the gleaners, and the festivals of praise. The very rain, and sleet, and hail, seem only in nature's useful servants when found doing their simple duties in the country, and the east wind himself is nothing worse than a boisterous friend when we meet him between the hedgerows. But in the city where the painted stucco blisters under the smoky sun, and the sooty rain brings slush and mud, and the snow lies piled in dirty heaps, and the chill blasts whistle down dingy streets and shriek round flaring gaslit corners, no face of nature charms us. Weather in towns is like a skylark in a counting-house, out of place and in the way. Towns ought to be covered in, warmed by hot-water pipes and lighted by electricity. The weather is a country-lass, and does not appear to advantage in town. We liked well enough to flirt with her in the hay-field, but she does not seem so fascinating when we meet her in Palmao. There is too much of her there. The frank, free laugh, and hearty voice that sounded so pleasant in the dairy, jars against the artificiality of town-bread life, and her ways become exceedingly trying. Just lately she has been favouring us with almost incessant rain for about three weeks, and I am a dimmed, damp, moist, unpleasant body, as Mr. Mantellini puts it. Our next-door neighbour comes out in the back garden every now and then, and says it's doing the country a world of good. Not his coming out into the back garden, but the weather. He doesn't understand anything about it, but ever since he started a cucumber-frame last summer he has regarded himself in the light of an agriculturist, and talks in this absurd way with the idea of impressing the rest of the terrace with the notion that he's a retired farmer. I can only hope that for this one she is correct, and that the weather really is doing good to something, because it is doing me a considerable amount of damage. It is spoiling both my clothes and my temper. The latter I can afford, as I have a good supply of it, but it wounds me to the quick to see my dear old hats and trousers sinking prematurely worn and aged beneath the cold world's blasts and snows. There is my new spring suit, too. A beautiful suit it was, and now it is hanging up so bespattered with mud I can't bear to look at it. That was Jim's fault, that was. I should never have gone out in it that night if it had not been for him. I was just trying it on when he came in. He threw up his arms with a wild yell the moment he caught sight of it and exclaimed that he had got him again. I said, Does it fit all right behind? Spiffing, old man, he replied, and then he wanted to know if I was coming out. I said no at first, but he overruled me. He said that a man with a suit like that had no right to stop indoors. Every citizen, said he, owes a duty to the public. Each one should contribute to the general happiness as far as lies in his power. Come out and give the girls a treat. Jim is slangy. I don't know where he picks it up. It certainly is not from me. I said, Do you think it will really please him? He said it would be like a day in the country to them. That decided me. It was a lovely evening, and I went. When I got home, I undressed and rubbed myself down with whiskey, put my feet in hot water, and a mustard plaster on my chest, had a basin of gruel, had a glass of hot brandy and water, tallowed my nose and went to bed. These prompt and vigorous measures aided by a naturally strong constitution were the means of preserving my life. But as for the suit, well, there. It isn't a suit. It's a splash-board. And I did fancy that suit, too. But that's just the way. I never do get particularly fond of anything in this world, but what something dreadful happens to it. I had a tame rat when I was a boy, and I loved that animal, as only a boy would love an old water rat. And one day it fell into a large dish of gooseberry fool that was standing to cool in the kitchen, and nobody knew what to become of the poor creature until the second helping. I do hate wet weather in town. At least it is not so much the wet as the mud that I object to. Somehow or other I seem to possess an irresistible alluring power over mud. I have only to show myself in the street on a muddy day to be half smothered by it. It all comes of being so attractive, as the old lady said when she was struck by lightning. Other people can go out on dirty days and walk about for hours and bring a speck upon themselves. While if I go across the road I come back a perfect disgrace to be seen, as in my boyish days my poor dear mother tried often to tell me. If there were only one dab of mud to be found in the whole of London I am convinced I should carry it off from all competitors. I wish I could return the affection, but I fear I never shall be able to. I have a horror of what they call the London Particular. I feel miserable and muggy all through a dirty day and it is quite a relief to pull one's clothes off and get into bed out of the way of it all. Everything goes wrong in wet weather. I don't know how it is but there always seem to me to be more people and dogs and perambulators and cabs and carts about in wet weather than at any other time and they all get in your way more and everybody is so disagreeable except myself and it does make me so wild. And then too somehow I always find myself carrying more things in wet weather than in dry and when you have a bag and three parcels and a newspaper and it suddenly comes on to rain you can't open your umbrella. Which reminds me of another phase of the weather that I can't bear and that is April weather so-called because it always comes in May. Poets think it very nice. As it does not know its own mind five minutes together they liken it to a woman and it is supposed to be very charming on that account. I don't appreciate it myself. Such lightning change business may be all very agreeable in a girl. It is no doubt highly delightful to have to do with a person who grins one moment about nothing at all and snivels the next for precisely the same cause and who then giggles and then sulks and who is rude and affectionate and bad-tempered and jolly and boisterous and silent and passionate and cold and standoffish and flopping all in one minute. Mind, I don't say this. It is those poets and they are supposed to be connoisseurs of this sort of thing but in the weather the disadvantages of the system are more apparent. A woman's tears do not make one wet but the rain does and her coldness does not lay the foundations of asthma and rheumatism as the east wind is apt to. I can prepare for and put up with a regularly bad day but these apath of all sorts kind of days do not suit me. It aggravates me to see a bright blue sky above me when I am walking along wet through and there is something so exasperating about the way the sun comes out smiling after a drenching shower and seems to say Lord love you, you don't mean to say you're wet well I am surprised why it was only my fun. They don't give you time to open or shut your umbrella in an English April especially if it is an automaton one the umbrella I mean not the April I bought an automaton once in April and I did have a time with it I wanted an umbrella and I went into a shop in the Strand and told them so and they said yes sir, what sort of an umbrella would you like? I said I should like one that would keep the rain off and that would not allow itself to be left behind in a railway carriage try an automaton said the shopman what's an automaton said I oh it's a beautiful arrangement replied the man with a touch of enthusiasm it opens and shuts itself I bought one and found that he was quite correct it did open and shut itself I had no control over it whatever when it began to rain which it did that season every alternate five minutes I used to try and get the machine to open but it would not budge and then it used to stand and struggle with the wretched thing and shake it and swear at it while the rain poured down in torrents then the moment the rain ceased the absurd thing would go up suddenly with a jerk it would not come down again and I had to walk about under a bright blue sky with an umbrella over my head wishing that it would come on to rain again so that it might not seem that I was insane when it did shut it did so unexpectedly and knocked one's hat off I don't know why it should be so but it is an undeniable fact that there is nothing makes a man look so supremely ridiculous as losing his hat the feeling of helpless misery that shoots down one's back on suddenly become aware that one's head is bare is among the most bitter ills that flesh is heir to and then there is the wild chase after it accompanied by an excitable small dog who thinks it is a game and in the course of which you are certain to upset three or four innocent children to say nothing of their mothers but a fat old gentleman on to the top of a perambulator carrom off a lady's seminary into the arms of a wet sweep after this the idiotic hilarity of the spectators and the disreputable appearance of the hat when recovered appear but of minor importance altogether what between March winds April showers and the entire absence of May flowers spring is not a success in cities it is all very well in the country as I have said but in towns whose population is anything over 10,000 it most certainly ought to be abolished in the world's grim workshops it is like the children out of place neither shows to advantage amid the dust and din it seems so sad to see the little dirt-grimed brats try to play in the noisy courts and muddy streets poor little uncared for unwanted human atoms they are not children children are bright-eyed, chubby and shy these are dingy screeching elves their tiny faces seared and withered their baby laughter cracked and hoarse the spring of life and the spring of the year were alike meant to be cradled in the green lap of nature to us in the town spring brings but its cold winds and drizzling rains we must seek it among the leafless woods and the brambly lanes on the heathy moors and the great still hills if we want to feel its joyous breath and hear its silent voices there is a glorious freshness in the spring there the scurrying clouds, the open bleakness the rushing wind and the clear bright air thrill one with vague energies and hopes life, like the landscape around us seems bigger and wider and freer a rainbow road leading to unknown ends through the silvery rents that bar the sky we seem to catch a glimpse of the great hope and grandeur that lies around this little throbbing world and a breath of its scent is wafted at us from the wings of the wild March wind strange thoughts we do not understand us during in our hearts voices are calling us to some great effort to some mighty work but we do not comprehend their meaning yet and the hidden echoes within us that would reply are struggling in articulate and dumb we stretch our hands like children to the light seeking to grasp we know not what our thoughts, like the boys' thoughts in the Danish song are very long, long thoughts and very vague we cannot see their end it must be so all thoughts that peer outside this narrow world cannot be else than dim and shapeless the thoughts that we can clearly grasp are very little thoughts that two and two make four that when we are hungry it is pleasant to eat that honesty is the best policy all greater thoughts are undefined and vast to our poor childish brains we see but dimly through the mists that roll around our time-girt isle of life and only hear the distant surging of the great sea beyond end of section 7 what I've suffered from them this morning no tongue can tell it began with Gustavus Adolphus Gustavus Adolphus, they call him Gusti downstairs for short is a very good sort of dog when he's in the middle of a large field or on a fairly extensive common but I won't have him indoors he means well but this house is not his size he stretches himself and overgo two chairs and a what-not he wags his tail and the room looks as if a devastating army had marched through it he breathes and it puts the fire out at dinner-time he creeps in under the table lies there for a while and then gets up suddenly the first intimation we have of his movements is all given by the table which appears animated by a desire to turn somersaults we all clutch at it frantically and endeavour to maintain it in a horizontal position where upon his struggles he being under the impression that some wicked conspiracy is being hatched against him become fearful and the final picture presented is generally that of an overturned table and a smashed up dinner sandwiched between two sprawling layers of women and women he came in this morning in his usual style which he appears to have founded on that of an American cyclone and the first thing he did was to sweep my coffee-cup off the table with his tail sending the contents full into the middle of my waistcoat I rose from my chair hurriedly and remarking hmm approached him at a rapid rate he proceeded me in the direction of the door at the door he met Eliza coming in with eggs Eliza observed and sat down on the floor the eggs took up different positions about the carpet where they spread themselves out and Gustavus Adolphus left the room I called after him strongly advising him to go straight downstairs and not let me see him again for the next hour or so and he seemed to agree with me dodged the coal-scoop and went while I returned, dried myself and finished breakfast I made sure that he had gone into the yard but when I looked into the passage ten minutes later he was sitting at the top of the stairs I ordered him down at once but he only barked and jumped about so I went to see what was the matter it was Tittum's she was sitting on the top stair but one and wouldn't let him pass Tittum's is our kitten she's about the size of a penny roll her back was up and she was swearing like a medical student she does swear fearfully I do a little that way myself sometimes but I'm a mere amateur compared with her to tell you the truth mind this is strictly between ourselves please I shouldn't like your wife to know I said it the women folk don't understand these things but between you and me you know I think it does a man good to swear swearing is the safety valve through which the bad temper that might otherwise do serious internal injury to his mental mechanism escapes in harmless vaporing when a man has said bless you my dear, sweet sir what the sun moon and stars made you so careless if I may be permitted the expression as to allow your light and delicate foot to descend upon my corn with so much force is it that you are physically incapable of comprehending the direction in which you are proceeding you nice clever young man, you all words to that effect he feels better swearing has the same soothing effect upon our angry passions that smashing the furniture or slamming the doors is so well known to exercise added to which it is much cheaper swearing clears a man out like a peneth of gunpowder does the wash house chimney an occasional explosion is good for both I rather distrust a man who never swears or savagely kicks the footstool or pokes the fire with unnecessary violence without some outlet the anger caused by the ever occurring troubles of life is apt to wrinkle and fester within the petty annoyance instead of being thrown from us sits down beside us and becomes a sorrow and the little offence is brooded over till in the hot bed of rumination it grows into a great injury under whose poisonous shadow springs up hatred and revenge swearing relieves the feelings that is what swearing does I explained this to my aunt on one occasion but it didn't answer with her she said I had no business to have such feelings that is what I told Tithams I told her she ought to be ashamed of herself brought up in a Christian family as she was too I don't so much mind hearing an old cat swear but I can't bear to see a mere kitten give way to it it seems sad in one so young I put Tithams in my pocket and returned to my desk I forgot her for the moment and when I looked I found that she had squirmed out of my pocket onto the table and was trying to swallow the pen then she put her leg into the ink pot and upset it then she licked her leg then she swore again at me this time I put her down on the floor and there Tim began rowing with her I do wish Tim would mind his own business it was no concern of his what she had been doing besides he is not a saint himself he is only a two-year-old fox terrier and he interferes with everything and gives himself the heirs of a grey-headed scotch collie Tithams's mother has come in and Tim has got his nose scratched for which I am remarkably glad I have put them all three out in the passage where they are fighting at the present moment I'm in a mess with the ink and in a thundering bad temper and if anything more in the cat or dog line comes fooling about me this morning it had better bring its own funeral contractor with it yet in general I like cats and dogs very much indeed what jolly chaps they are they are much superior to human beings as companions they do not quarrel or argue with you they never talk about themselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself and keep up an appearance of being interested in the conversation they never make stupid remarks they never observe to Miss Brown across a dinner-table that they always understood she was very sweet on Mr Jones who has just married Miss Robinson they never mistake your wife's cousin for her husband and fancy that you were the father-in-law and they never ask a young author with fourteen tragedies sixteen comedies, seven farcers and a couple of burlesques in his desk why he doesn't write a play they never say unkind things they never tell us of our faults merely for our own good they do not, at inconvenient moments mildly remind us of our past follies and mistakes they do not say oh yes a lot of use you are if you're ever really wanted sarcastic like they never inform us like our inamoratas sometimes do that we are not nearly so nice as we used to be we are always the same to them they are always glad to see us they are with us in all our humours they are merry when we are glad sober when we feel solemn and sad when we are sorrowful hello happy and want a lark right you are, I'm your man here I am frisking round you leaping, barking, pirouetting ready for any amount of fun and mischief look at my eyes if you doubt me what shall it be? a romp in the drawing-room and never mind the furniture or a scamper in the fresh cool air a scud across the fields and down the hill and won't we let old gaffer goggles as geese know what time of day it is neither you come along or you'd like to be quiet and think very well Pussy can sit on the arm of the chair and pur and Montmorency will curl himself up on the rug and blink at the fire yet keeping one eye on you the while in case you are seized with any sudden desire in the direction of rats and when we bury our face in our hands and wish we had never been born they don't sit up very straight and observe that we have brought it all upon ourselves they don't even hope it will be a warning to us but they come up softly and shove their heads against us if it is a cat she stands on your shoulder rumples your hair and says Lord, I am sorry for you old man as plain as words can speak and if it is a dog he looks up at you with his big true eyes and says with them well, you've always got me, you know we'll go through the world together and always stand by each other, won't we? he is very imprudent, a dog is he never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in the right or in the wrong never bothers as to whether you are going up or down upon life's ladder never asks whether you are rich or poor silly or wise, sinner or saint you are his pal that is enough for him and come look or misfortune good repute or bad honour or shame he is going to stick to you to comfort you, guard you and give his life for you if need be foolish, brainless, soulless dog ah, old staunch friend with your deep, clear eyes and bright, quick glances that take in all one has to say before one has time to speak it do you know you are only an animal and have no mind? do you know that the dull-eyed, gin-sudden lout leaning against the post out there is immeasurably your intellectual superior? do you know that every little-minded, selfish scoundrel who lives by cheating and tricking who never did a gentle deed or said a kind word who never had a thought that was not mean and low or a desire that was not base whose every action is a fraud whose every utterance is a lie do you know that these crawling skulks and there are millions of them in the world do you know they are all as much superior to you as the sun is superior to rush-light you honourable, brave-hearted, unselfish brute they are men, you know and men are the greatest, the noblest and wisest and best beings in the whole vast eternal universe any man will tell you that yes, poor doggy you are very stupid very stupid indeed compared with those clever men they'll understand all about politics and philosophy and who know everything in short except what we are and where we came from and wither we are going and what everything outside this tiny world and most things in it are never mind though, pussy and doggy we like you both all the better for your being stupid we all like stupid things men can't bear clever women and a woman's ideal man is someone she can call a dear old stupid it is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves we love them at once for being so the world must be rather a rough place for clever people ordinary folk dislike them and as for themselves they hate each other most cordially but there the clever people are such a very insignificant minority that it really doesn't much matter if they are unhappy so long as the foolish people can be made comfortable the world as a whole will get on tolerably well cats have the credit of being more worldly wise than dogs of looking more after their own interests and being less blindly devoted to those of their friends and we men and women are naturally shocked at such selfishness cats certainly do love a family that has a carpet in the kitchen more than a family that has not and if there are many children about they prefer to spend their leisure time next door but taken all together cats are libeled make a friend of one and she will stick to you through thick and thin all the cats that I have had have been most firm comrades I had a cat once that used to follow me about everywhere until it even got quite embarrassing and I had to beg her as a personal favour not to accompany me any further down the high street she used to sit up for me when I was late home and meet me in the passage it made me feel quite like a married man except that she never asked where I had been and then didn't believe me when I told her another cat I had used to get drunk regularly every day she would hang about for hours outside the cellar door for the purpose of sneaking in on the first opportunity and lapping up the drippings from the beer cask I do not mention this habit of hers in praise of the species but merely to show how almost human some of them are if the trans-migration of souls is a fact this animal was certainly qualifying most rapidly for a Christian for her vanity was only second to her love of drink whenever she caught a particularly big rat she would bring it up into the room where we were all sitting lay the corpse down in the midst of us and wait to be praised Lord, how the girls used to scream poor rats they seem only to exist so that cats and dogs may gain credit for killing them and chemists make a fortune by inventing specialties in poison for their destruction and yet there is something fascinating about them there is a weirdness and uncanniness attaching to them they are so cunning and strong, so terrible in their numbers so cruel, so secret they swarm in deserted houses where the broken casements hang rotting to the crumbling walls and the doors swing creaking on their rusty hinges they know the sinking ship and leave her no one knows how or whither they whisper to each other in their hiding places how a dune will fall upon the hall and the great name die forgotten they do fearful deeds in ghastly charnel houses no tale of horror is complete without the rats in stories of ghosts and murderers they scamper through the echoing rooms and the gnoing of their teeth is heard behind the wainscot and their gleaming eyes peer through the holes in the worm-eaten tapestry and they scream in shrill unearthly notes in the dead of night while the moaning winds sweeps sobbing round the ruined turret towers and passes wailing like a woman through the chambers bare and tenantless and dying prisoners in their loathsome dungeons see through the horrid gloom their small red eyes like glittering coals hear in the death-like silence the rush of their claw-like feet and start up shrieking in the darkness and watch through the awful night I love to read tales about rats they make my flesh creep so I like that tale of Bishop Hato and the rats the wicked bishop, you know, had ever so much corn stored in his granaries and would not let the starving people touch it but when they prayed to him for food gathered them together in his barn and then shutting the doors on them set fire to the place and burned them all to death but next day there came thousands upon thousands of rats sent to do judgment on him then Bishop Hato fled to his strong tower that stood in the middle of the Rhine and barred himself in and fancied he was safe but the rats they swam the river they gnawed their way through the thick stone walls and et him alive where he sat they have whetted their teeth against the stones and now they pick the bishop's bones they gnawed the flesh from every limb for they were sent to do judgment on him ooh, it's a lovely tale then there is the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin how first he piped the rats away and afterward when the mayor broke faith with him drew all the children along with him and went into the mountain what a curious old legend that is I wonder what it means or has it any meaning at all there seems something strange and deep lying hid beneath the rippling Rhine it haunts me that picture of the quaint mysterious old Piper piping through Hamlin's narrow streets and the children following with dancing feet and thoughtful eager faces the old folks try to stay them but the children pay no heed they hear the weird witched music and must follow the games are left unfinished and the playthings drop from their careless hands they know not whether they are hastening the mystic music calls to them and they follow heedless and unasking where it stirs and vibrates in their hearts and other sounds grow faint so they wander through Pied Piper Street away from Hamlin Town I get thinking sometimes if the Pied Piper is really dead or if he may not still be roaming up and down our streets and lanes but playing now so softly that only the children hear him why do the little faces look so grave and solemn when they pause a while from romping and stand deep-wrapped with straining eyes they only shake their curly heads and dart back laughing to their playmates when we question them but I fancy myself they have been listening to the magic music of the old Pied Piper and perhaps with those bright eyes of theirs have even seen his odd fantastic figure gliding unnoticed through the whirl and throng even we grown-up children hear his piping now and then but the yearning notes are very far away and the noisy blustering world is always bellowing so loud it drowns the dreamlike melody one day the sweet sad strains will sound out full and clear and then we too shall, like the little children, throw our playthings all aside and follow the loving hands will be stretched out to stay us and the voices we have learned to listen for will cry to us to stop but we shall push the fond arms gently back and pass out through the sorrowing house and through the open door for the wild strange music will be ringing in our hearts and we shall know the meaning of its song by then I wish people could love animals without getting maudlin over them, as so many do women are the most hardened offenders in such respects but even our intellectual sex often degrade pets into nuisances by absurd idolatry there are the gushing young ladies who, having read David Copperfield have thereupon sought out a small long-haired dog of nondescript breed possessed of an irritating habit of criticising a man's trousers and are finally commenting upon the same by a sniff indicative of contempt and disgust they talk sweet girlish prattle to this animal when there is anyone near enough to overhear them and they kiss its nose and put its unwashed head up against their cheek in a most touching manner though I have noticed that these caresses are principally performed when there are young men hanging about then there are the old ladies who worship a fat poodle scant of breath and full of fleas I knew a couple of elderly spinsters once who had a sort of German sausage on legs which they called a dog between them they used to wash its face with warm water every morning it had a mutton cutler to regularly for breakfast and on Sundays when one of the ladies went to church the other always stopped at home to keep the dog company there are many families where the whole interest of life is centred upon the dog cats by the way rarely suffer from excessive adulation a cat possesses a very fair sense of the ridiculous and will put her paw down kindly but firmly upon any nonsense of this kind dogs however seem to like it they encourage their owners in the tomfoolery and the consequence is that in the circles I am speaking of what Dear Fido has done, does do, will do, won't do, can do, can't do was doing, is doing, is going to do, shall do, shan't do and is about to be going to have done is the continual theme of discussion from morning till night all the conversation consisting as it does of the very dregs of imbecility is addressed to this confounded animal the family sit in a row all day long watching him commenting upon his actions telling each other anecdotes about him recalling his virtues and remembering with tears how one day they lost him for two whole hours on which occasion he was brought home in a most brutal manner by the butcher boy who had been met carrying him by the scruff of his neck with one hand while soundly cuffing his head with the other after recovering from these bitter recollections they vie with each other in bursts of admiration for the brute until some more than usually enthusiastic member unable any longer to control his feelings swoops down upon the unhappy quadruped in a frenzy of affection clutches it to his heart and slobbers over it where upon the others mad with envy rise up and seizing as much of the dog as the greed of the first one has left to them murmur praise and devotion among these people everything is done through the dog if you want to make love to the eldest daughter or get the old man to lend you the garden roller or the mother to subscribe to the society for the suppression of solo cornet players in theatrical orchestras it's a pity there isn't one anyhow you have to begin with the dog you must gain its approbation before they will even listen to you and if, as is highly probable, the animal whose frank doggy nature has been warped by the unnatural treatment he has received a response to your overtures of friendship by viciously snapping at you your cause is lost forever if Fido won't take to anyone the father has thoughtfully remarked beforehand I say that man is not to be trusted you know Maria how often I have said that ah, he knows bless him drat him and to think that the surly brute was once an innocent puppy all legs and head full of fun and play and burning with ambition to become a big good dog and bark like mother ah, me, life sadly changes us all the world seems a vast horrible grinding machine into which what is fresh and bright and pure is pushed at one end to come out old and crabbed and wrinkled at the other look even at pussy sobesides with her dull sleepy glance her grave slow walk and dignified prudish heirs who could ever think that once she was the blue eyed, whirling, scampering head over heels, mad little firework that we call a kitten what marvellous vitality a kitten has it is really something very beautiful the way life bubbles over in the little creatures they rush about and new and spring dance on their hind legs embrace everything with their front ones roll over and over lie on their backs and kick they don't know what to do with themselves they are so full of life can you remember reader when you and I felt something of the same sort of thing can you remember those glorious days of fresh young manhood how when coming home along the moonlit road we felt too full of life for sober walking and had to spring and skip and wave our arms until belated farmers wives thought and with good reason too that we were mad and kept close to the hedge while we stood and laughed aloud to see them scuttle off so fast and made their blood run cold with a wild parting hoop and the tears came we knew not why oh that magnificent young life that crowned as kings of the earth that rushed through every tingling vein till we seemed to walk on air that thrilled through our throbbing brains and told us to go forth and conquer the whole world that welled up in our young hearts till we longed to stretch out our arms and gather all the toiling men and women and the little children to our breast and love them all all ah they were grand days those deep full days when our coming life like an unseen organ peeled strange yearnful music in our ears and our young blood cried out like a war-horse for the battle ah our pulse beats slow and steady now and our old joints are rheumatic and we love our easy chair and pipe and sneer at boys' enthusiasm bro for one brief moment of that godlike life again end of section 8 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Czechris London UK the idle thoughts of an idle fellow by Jerome K. Jerome section 9 on being shy all greater literary men are shy I am myself, though I am told it is hardly noticeable I am glad it is not it used to be extremely prominent at one time and was the cause of much misery to myself and discomfort to everyone about me and my lady friends especially complained most bitterly about it a shy man's lot is not a happy one the men dislike him the women despise him and he dislikes and despises himself use brings him no relief and there is no cure for him except time though I once came across a delicious recipe for overcoming the misfortune I headed among the answers to correspondence in a small weekly journal and ran as follows I have never forgotten it adopt an easy and pleasing manner especially toward ladies poor wretch I can imagine the grin with which you must have read that advice adopt an easy and pleasing manner especially toward ladies fuss sooth adopt anything of the kind my dear young shy friend your attempt to put on any other disposition than your own will infallibly result in your becoming ridiculously gushing and offensively familiar be your own natural self and then you will only be thought to be surly and stupid the shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him he is able to a certain extent to communicate his misery he frightens other people as much as they frighten him he acts like a damper upon the whole room and the most jovial spirits become in his presence depressed and nervous this is a good deal brought about by misunderstanding many people mistake the shy man's timidity for overbearing arrogance and are awed and insulted by it his awkwardness is resented as insolent carelessness and when terror is stricken at the first word addressed to him the blood rushes to his head and the power of speech completely fails him he is regarded as an awful example of the evil effects of giving way to passion but indeed to be misunderstood is the shy man's fate on every occasion and whatever impression he endeavours to create he is sure to convey its opposite when he makes a joke it is looked upon as a pretended relation of fact and his want of veracity much condemned his sarcasm is accepted as his literal opinion and gains for him the reputation of being an ass while if on the other hand wishing to ingratiate himself he ventures upon a little bit of flattery he is taken for satire and he is hated ever afterward these and the rest of a shy man's troubles are always very amusing to other people and have afforded material for comic writing from time immemorial but if we look a little deeper we shall find there is a pathetic one might almost say a tragic side to the picture a shy man means a lonely man a man cut off from all companionship all sociability he moves about the world but does not mix with it between him and his fellow men there runs ever an impassable barrier a strong invisible wall that trying in vain to scale he but bruises himself against he sees the pleasant faces and hears the pleasant voices on the other side but he cannot stretch his hand across to grasp another hand he stands watching the merry groups and he longs to speak and to claim kindred with them but they pass him by chatting gaily to one another and he cannot stay them he tries to reach them but his prison walls move with him and hem him in on every side in the busy street in the crowded room in the grind of work in the whirl of pleasure amid the many or amid the few wherever men congregate together wherever the music of human speech is heard and human thought is flashed from human eyes there shunned and solitary the shy man like a leper stands apart his soul is full of love and longing but the world knows it not the iron mask of shyness is riveted before his face and the man beneath is never seen genial words and hearty greetings are ever rising to his lips but they die away in unheard whispers behind the steel clamps his heart aches for the weary brother but his sympathy is dumb contempt and indignation against wrong choke up his throat and finding no safety valve when sin passionate utterance they may burst forth they only turn in again and harm him all the hate and scorn and love of a deep nature such as the shy man is ever cursed by fester and corrupt within instead of spending themselves abroad and sour him into a misanthrope and cynic yes, shy men like ugly women have a bad time of it in this world to go through which with any comfort needs the hide of a rhinoceros thick skin is indeed our moral clothes and without it we are not fit to be seen about in civilised society a poor gasping blushing creature with trembling knees and twitching hands is a painful sight to everyone and if it cannot cure itself the sooner it goes and hangs itself the better the disease can be cured for the comfort of the shy I can assure them of that from personal experience I do not like speaking about myself as may have been noticed but in the cause of humanity I on this occasion will do so and will confess that at one time I was as a young man in the Bab Ballad says the shyest of the shy and whenever I was introduced to any pretty maid my knees they knocked together just as if I was afraid now I would, nay have on this very day before yesterday I did the deed alone and entirely by myself as the school boy said in translating the Bellum Gallicum did I beard a railway refreshment room young lady in her own lair I rebuked her in terms of mingled bitterness and sorrow for her callousness and want of condescension I insisted courteously but firmly on being accorded that deference and attention that was the right of the travelling Britain and at the end I looked her full in the face need I say more true immediately after doing so I left the room with what may possibly have appeared to be precipitation and without waiting for any refreshment but that was because I had changed my mind not because I was frightened you understand one consolation that shy folk can take on to themselves is that shyness is certainly no sign of stupidity it is easy enough for bull-headed clowns to sneer at nerves but the highest natures are not necessarily those containing the greatest amount of moral brass the horse is not an inferior animal to the cocks sparrow nor the deer of the forest to the pig shyness simply means extreme sensibility and has nothing whatever to do with self-consciousness or with conceit though its relationship to both is continually insisted upon by the Paul Parrott School of Philosophy conceit indeed is the quickest cure for it when it once begins to dawn upon you that you are a good deal cleverer than anyone else in this world bashfulness becomes shocked and leaves you when you can look round a room full of people and think that each one is a mere child in intellect compared with yourself you feel no more shy of them than you would of a select company of magpies or orangutans conceit is the finest armour that a man can wear upon its smooth impenetrable surface the puny daggathrus of spite and envy glance harmlessly aside without that breastplate the sword of talent cannot force its way through the battle of life for blows have to be born as well as dealt I do not of course speak of the conceit that displays itself in an elevated nose and a falsetto voice that is not real conceit that is only playing at being conceited like children play at being kings and queens and go strutting about with feathers and long trains genuine conceit does not make a man objectionable on the contrary it tends to make him genial kind-hearted and simple he has no need of affectation he's far too well-satisfied with his own character and his pride is too deep-seated to appear at all on the outside careless alike of praise or blame he can afford to be truthful too far in fancy above the rest of mankind to trouble about their petty distinctions he is equally at home with duke or costume-onger and valuing no one's standard but his own he is never tempted to practice that miserable pretense that less self-reliant people offer up as an hourly sacrifice to the god of their neighbour's opinion the shy man, on the other hand, is humble modest of his own judgement and over-anxious concerning that of others but this in the case of a young man is surely right enough his character is unformed it is slowly evolving itself out of a chaos of doubt and disbelief before the growing insight and experience the diffidence recedes a man rarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period even if his own inward strength does not throw it off the rubbings of the world generally smooth it down you scarcely ever meet a really shy man except in novels or on the stage where by the by he is much admired especially by the women there in that supernatural land he appears as a fair-haired and saint-like young man fair hair and goodness always go together on the stage no respectable audience would believe in one without the other I knew an actor who mislaid his wig once and had to rush on to play the hero in his own hair which was jet-black and the gallery howled at all his noble sentiments under the impression that he was the villain he the shy young man loves the heroine oh so devotedly but only in asides for he dare not tell her of it and he is so noble and unselfish and speaks in such a low voice and is so good to his mother and the bad people in the play they laugh at him and jeer at him but he takes it all so gently and in the end it transpires that he is such a clever man though nobody knew it and then the heroine tells him she loves him and he is so surprised and oh so happy and everybody loves him and asks him to forgive them which he does in a few well-chosen and sarcastic words and blesses them and he seems to have generally such a good time of it that all the young fellows who are not shy long to be shy but the really shy man knows better he knows that it is not quite so pleasant in reality he is not quite so interesting there as in the fiction he's a little more clumsy and stupid and a little less devoted and gentle and his hair is much darker which taken altogether considerably alters the aspect of the case the point where he does resemble his ideal is in his faithfulness I am fully prepared to allow the shy young man that virtue he is constant in his love but the reason is not far to seek the fact is it exhausts all his stock of courage to look one woman in the face and it will be simply impossible for him to go through the ordeal with a second he stands in far too much dread of the whole female sex to want to go gadding about with many of them one is quite enough for him now it is different with the young man who is not shy he has temptations which his bashful brother never encounters he looks around and everywhere sees roguish eyes and laughing lips what more natural than that amid so many roguish eyes and laughing lips he should become confused and forgetting for the moment which particular pair of roguish eyes and laughing lips it is that he belongs to go off making love to the wrong set the shy man who never looks at anything but his own boots sees not and is not tempted happy shy man not but what the shy man himself would much rather not be happy in that way he longs to go it with the others and curses himself every day for not being able to he will now and again growing up his courage by a tremendous effort plunge into roguishness but it is always a terrible fiasco and after one or two feeble flounders he crawls out again limp and pitiable I say pitiable though I am afraid he never is pitted there are certain misfortunes which while inflicting a vast amount of suffering upon their victims gain for them no sympathy losing an umbrella falling in love toothache black eyes and having your hat sat upon may be mentioned as a few examples but the chief of them all is shyness the shy man is regarded as an animate joke his torches are the sport of the drawing room arena and are pointed out and discussed with much gusto look! cry his tittering audience to each other he's blushing just watch his legs says one do you notice how he is sitting adds another right on the edge of the chair seems to have plenty of colour sneers a military looking gentleman piti he's got so many hands murmurs an elderly lady with her own calmly folded on her lap they quite confuse him a yarder too off his feet wouldn't be a disadvantage chimes in the comic man especially as he seems so anxious to hide them and then another suggests that with such a voice he ought to have been a sea-captain some draw attention to the desperate way in which he is grasping his hat some comment upon his limited powers of conversation others remark upon the troublesome nature of his cough and so on until his peculiarities and the company are both thoroughly exhausted his friends and relations make matters still more unpleasant for the poor boy friends and relations are privileged to be more disagreeable than other people not content with making fun of him among themselves they insist on his seeing the joke they mimic and caricature him for his own edification one pretending to imitate him goes outside and comes in again in a ludicrously nervous manner explaining to him afterward that that is the way he meaning the shy fellow walks into a room or turning to him with this is the way you shake hands proceeds to go through a comic pantomime with the rest of the room taking hold of everyone's hand as if it were a hot plate and flabbily dropping it again and then they ask him why he blushes and why he stammers and why he always speaks in an almost inaudible tone as if they thought he did it on purpose then one of them sticking out his chest and strutting about the room like a powder pigeon suggests quite seriously that that is the style he should adopt the old man slaps him on the back and says be bold, my boy, don't be afraid of any one the mother says never do anything that you need be ashamed of, Algernon and then you never need be ashamed of anything you do and beaming mildly at him seems surprised at the clearness of her own logic the boys tell him that he's worse than a girl and the girls repudiate the implied slur upon their sex by indignantly exclaiming that they are sure no girl would be half as bad they are quite right no girl would be there is no such thing as a shy woman or at all events I have never come across one and until I do I shall not believe in them I know that the generally accepted belief is quite the reverse all women are supposed to be like timid startled fawns blushing and casting down their gentle eyes when looked at and running away when spoken to while we men are supposed to be a bold and rollicky lot and the poor dear little women admire us for it but are terribly afraid of us it is a pretty theory but like most generally accepted theories mere nonsense the girl of twelve is self-contained and as cool as the proverbial cucumber while her brother of twenty stammers and stutters by her side a woman will enter a concert room late interrupt the performance and disturb the whole audience without moving a hair while her husband follows her a crushed heap of apologizing misery the superior nerve of women in all matters connected with love from the casting of the first sheep's eye down to the end of the honeymoon is too well acknowledged to need comment nor is the example a fair one to cite in the present instance the positions not being equally balanced love is women's business and in business we all lay aside our natural weaknesses the shyest man I ever knew was a photographic tout End of section nine this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Czech Chris London UK the idle thoughts of an idle fellow by Jerome K. Jerome section ten on babies oh yes I do I know a lot about them I was one myself once though not long not so long as my clothes they were very long I recollect and always in my way when I wanted to kick why do babies have such yards of unnecessary clothing it is not a riddle I really want to know I never could understand it is it that the parents are ashamed of the size of the child and wish to make believe that it is longer than it actually is I asked a nurse once why it was she said law sir they always have long clothes bless their little hearts and when I explained that her answer although doing credit to her feelings hardly disposed of my difficulty she replied law sir you wouldn't have them in short clothes little dears and she said it in a tone that seemed to imply I had suggested some unmanly outrage since then I have felt shy at making inquiries on the subject and the reason if reason there be is still a mystery to me but indeed putting them in any clothes at all seems absurd to my mind goodness knows there is enough of dressing and undressing to be gone through in life without beginning it before we need and one would think that people who live in bed might at all events be spared the torture why wake the poor little wretches up in the morning to take one lot of clothes off fix another lot on and put them to bed again and then at night haul them out once more merely to change everything back and when all is done what difference is there I should like to know between a baby's night shirt and the thing it wears in the daytime very likely however I am only making myself ridiculous I often do so I am informed and I will therefore say no more upon this matter of clothes except only that it will be of great convenience if some fashion were adopted enabling you to tell a boy from a girl at present it is most awkward neither hair, dress, nor conversation affords the slightest clue and you are left to guess by some mysterious law of nature you invariably guess wrong and thereupon regarded by all the relatives and friends as a mixture of fool and nave the enormity of alluding to a male babe as she being only equaled by the atrocity of referring to a female infant as he whichever sex the particular child in question happens not to belong to is considered as beneath contempt and any mention of it is taken as a personal insult to the family and as you value your fair name do not attempt to get out of the difficulty by talking of it there are various methods by which you may achieve ignominy and shame by murdering a large and respected family with cold blood and afterwards depositing their bodies in the water company's reservoir you will gain much unpopularity in the neighbourhood of your crime and even robbing a church will get you cordially disliked especially by the vicar but if you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out for you let a young mother hear you call dear baby it your best plan is to address the article as little angel the noun angel being of common gender suits the case admirably and the epithet is sure of being favourably received pet or beauty are useful for variety's sake but angel is the term that brings you the greatest credit for sense and good feeling the word should be preceded by a short giggle and accompanied by as much smile as possible and whatever you do don't forget to say that the child has got its father's nose this fetches the parents if I may be allowed a vulgarism more than anything they will pretend to laugh at the idea at first and will say oh nonsense you must then get excited and insist that it is a fact you need have no conscientious scruples on the subject because the things nose really does resemble its fathers at all events quite as much as it does anything else in nature being as it is a mere smudge do not despise these hints my friends there may come a time when with mama on one side and grand mama on the other a group of admiring young ladies not admiring you though behind and a bald-headed dab of humanity in front you will be extremely thankful for some idea of what to say a man, an unmarried man that is is never seen to such disadvantage as when undergoing the ordeal of seeing baby a cold shudder runs down his back at the bare proposal and the sickly smile with which he says how delighted he shall be ought surely to move even a mother's heart unless, as I am inclined to believe the whole proceeding is a mere device adopted by wives to discourage the visits of bachelor friends it is a cruel trick though whatever its excuse may be the bell is wrong and somebody sent to tell nurse to bring baby down this is the signal for all the females present to commence talking baby during which time you are left to your own sad thoughts and the speculations upon the practicability of suddenly recollecting an important engagement and the likelihood of your being believed if you do just when you have concocted an absurdly implausible tale about a man outside the door opens and at all severe looking woman enters carrying what at first sight appears to be a particularly skinny bolster with the feathers all at one end instinct however tells you that this is the baby and you rise with a miserable attempt at appearing eager when the first gush of feminine enthusiasm with which the object in question is received has died out and the number of ladies talking at once has been reduced to the ordinary four or five the circle of fluttering petticoats divides and room is made for you to step forward this you do with much the same air that you would walk into the dock at Bow Street and then feeling unutterably miserable you stand solemnly staring at the child there is dead silence and you know that everyone is waiting for you to speak you try to think of something to say but find to your horror that your reasoning faculties have left you it is a moment of despair and your evil genius seizing the opportunity suggests to you some of the most idiotic remarks that it is possible for a human being to perpetrate glancing round with an imbecile smile you sniggeringly observe that he hasn't got much hair has it nobody answers you for a minute but at last the stately nurse says with much gravity it is not customary for children five weeks old to have long hair another silence follows this and you feel you are being given a second chance which you avail yourself of by inquiring if it can walk yet or what they feed it on by this time you have got to be regarded as not quite right in your head and pity is the only thing felt for you the nurse however is determined that insane or not there shall be no shirking and that you shall go through your task to the end in the tones of a high priestess directing some religious mystery she says holding the bundle toward you take her in your arms sir you are too crushed to offer any resistance and so meekly accept the burden put your arm more down her middle sir says the high priestess and then all step back and watch you intently as though you were going to do a trick with it what to do you know no more than you did what to say it is certain something must be done and the only thing that occurs to you is to heave the unhappy infant up and down to the accompaniment of oopsie daisy or some remark of equal intelligence I wouldn't jig her sir if I were you says the nurse a very little upsets her you promptly decide not to jig her and sincerely hope that you have not gone too far already at this point the child itself who has hitherto been regarding you with an expression of mingled horror and disgust puts an end to the nonsense by beginning to yell at the top of its voice at which the priestess rushes forward and snatches it from you with there, there, there what didoms do to us how very extraordinary you say pleasantly whatever made it go off like that oh why you must have done something to her says the mother indignantly the child wouldn't scream like that for nothing it is evident they think you have been running pins into it the brat is calmed at last and would no doubt remain quiet enough only some mischievous busybody points you out again with who's this baby and the intelligent child recognizing you howls louder than ever whereupon some fat old lady remarks that it's strange how children take a dislike to anyone oh they know replies another mysteriously it's a wonderful thing adds a third and then everybody looks sideways at you convinced you are a scoundrel of the blackest die and they glory in the beautiful idea that your true character unguessed by your fellow men has been discovered by the untought instinct of a little child babies though with all their crimes and errors and not without their use not without use surely when they fill an empty heart not without use when at their call sunbeams of love break through care clouded faces not without use when their little fingers press wrinkles into smiles odd little people they are the unconscious comedians of the world's great stage they supply the humour in life's all too heavy drama each one a small but determined opposition to the order of things in general is forever doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place and in the wrong way the nurse girl who sent Jenny to see what Tommy and Totty were doing and tell them they mustn't new infantile nature give an average baby a fair chance and if it doesn't do something it altered to a doctor should be called in at once they have a genius for doing the most ridiculous things and they do them in a grave stoical manner that is irresistible the business like air with which two of them will join hands and proceed due east at a breakneck toddle while an excitable big sister is roaring for them to follow her in a westerly direction is most amusing except perhaps for the big sister they walk round a soldier staring at his legs with the greatest curiosity and poke him to see if he is real they stoutly maintain against all argument are much to the discomfort of the victim that the bashful young man at the end of the bus is Dada a crowded street corner suggests itself to their minds as a favourable spot for the discussion of family affairs at a shrill treble when in the middle of crossing the road they are seized with a sudden impulse to dance and the doorstep of a busy shop is the place they always select for sitting down and taking off their shoes when at home they find the biggest walking stick in the house or an umbrella, open preferred of much assistance in getting upstairs they discover that they love Mary Anne at the precise moment when that faithful domestic is blackledding the stove and nothing will relieve their feelings but to embrace her then and there with regard to food their favourite dishes are coke and cat's meat they nurse Pussy upside down and they show their affection for the dog by pulling his tail they are a deal of trouble and they make a place untidy and they cost a lot of money to keep still you would not have the house without them it would not be home without their noisy tongues and their mischief making hands would not the rooms seem silent without their pattering feet and might not you stray apart if no prattling voices called you together it should be so and yet I have sometimes thought the tiny hand seemed as a wedge dividing it is a bearish task to quarrel with that purest of all human affections that perfecting touch to a woman's life and mother's love it is a holy love that we coarser fibred men can hardly understand and I would not be deemed to lack reverence for it when I say that surely it need not swallow up all other affection the baby need not take your whole heart like the rich man who walled up the desert well is there not another thirsty traveller standing by? in your desire to be a good mother do not forget to be a good wife no need for all the thought and care to be only for one do not whenever poor Edwin wants you to come out answer indignantly what and leave baby do not spend all your evenings upstairs and do not confine your conversation exclusively to hooping cough and measles my dear little woman the child is not going to die every time it sneezes the house is not bound to get burned down and the nurse run away with a soldier every time you go outside the front door nor the cat sure to come and sit on the precious child's chest the moment you leave the bedside you worry yourself a good deal too much about that solitary chick and you worry everybody else too try and think of your other duties and your pretty face will not be always puckered into wrinkles and there will be cheerfulness in the parlour as well as in the nursery think of your big baby a little dance him about a bit call him pretty names laugh at him now and then it is only the first baby that takes up the whole of a woman's time five or six do not require nearly so much attention as one but before then the mischief has been done a house where there seems no room for him and a wife too busy to think of him have lost their hold on that so unreasonable husband of yours and he has learned to look elsewhere for comfort and companionship but there there there I shall get myself the character of a baby hater if I talk any more in this strain and heaven knows I am not one who could be to look into the little innocent faces clustered in timid helplessness round those great gates that open down into the world the world the small round world what a vast mysterious place it must seem to baby eyes what a trackless continent the back garden appears what marvellous explorations they make in the cellar under the stairs with what awe they gaze down the long street wondering like us bigger babies when we gaze up at the stars where it all ends and down that longest street of all that long dim street of life that stretches out before them what grave old-fashioned looks they seem to cast what pitiful frightened looks sometimes I saw a little mite sitting on a doorstep in a so-ho slum one night and I shall never forget the look that the gas-lamp showed me on its wizened face a look of dull despair as if from the squalid court the vista of its own squalid life had risen ghost-like and struck its heart dead with horror poor little feet just commencing the stony journey we old travellers far down the road can only pause to wave a hand to you you come out of the dark mist and we looking back see you so tiny in the distance standing on the brow of the hill your arms stretched out toward us God speed you we would stay and take your little hand in ours but the murmur of the great sea is in our ears and we may not linger we must hasten down for the shadowy ships are waiting to spread their sable sails this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Czechris London UK The Idol Thoughts of an Idol Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome section 11 on eating and drinking I always was fond of eating and drinking even as a child especially eating in those early days I had an appetite then also a digestion I remember a dull-eyed livid complexion gentleman coming to dine at our house once he watched me eating for about five minutes quite fascinated seemingly and then he turned to my father with does your boy ever suffer from dyspepsia? I never heard him complain of anything of that kind replied my father do you ever suffer from dyspepsia, collywobbles? they called me collywobbles but it was not my real name no par I answered after which I added what is dyspepsia par? my livid complexion friend regarded me with a look of mingled amazement and envy then in a tone of infinite pity he slowly said you will know some day my poor dear mother used to say she liked to see me eat and it has always been a pleasant reflection to me since that I must have given her much gratification in that direction a growing healthy lad taking plenty of exercise and careful to restrain himself from indulging in too much study can generally satisfy the most exacting expectations as regards his feeding powers it is amusing to see boys eat when you have not got to pay for it their idea of a square meal is a pound and a half of roast beef with five or six good sized potatoes soapy ones preferred as being more substantial plenty of greens and four thick slices of Yorkshire pudding followed by a couple of current dumplings a few green apples a penne of nuts half a dozen jumbles and a bottle of ginger beer after that they play at horses how they must despise us men who require to sit quiet for a couple of hours after dining off a spoonful of clear soup and the wing of a chicken but the boys have not all the advantages on their side a boy never enjoys the luxury of being satisfied a boy never feels full he can never stretch out his legs put his hands behind his head and closing his eyes sink into the ethereal blissfulness that encompasses the well-dined man a dinner makes no difference whatever to a boy to a man it is as a good fair is potion and after it the world appears a brighter and a better place a man who has dined satisfactorily experiences a yearning love toward all his fellow creatures he strokes the cat quite gently and calls it poor pussy in tones full of the tenderest emotion he sympathizes with the members of the German band outside and wonders if they are cold and for the moment he does not even hate his wife's relations a good dinner brings out all the softer side of a man under its genial influence the gloomy and morose become jovial and chatty sour starchy individuals who all the rest of the day go about looking as if they lived on vinegar and epsom salts break out into wreathed smiles after dinner and exhibit a tendency to pat small children on the head and to talk to them vaguely about sixpences serious men thaw and become mildly cheerful and snobbish young men of the heavy moustache type forget to make themselves objectionable I always feel sentimental myself after dinner it is the only time when I can properly appreciate love stories then when the hero clasps her to his heart in one last wild embrace and stifles a sob I feel as sad as though I had dealt a twist and turned up only a deuce and when the heroine dies in the end I weep if I read the same tale early in the morning I should sneer at it digestion or rather indigestion has a marvellous effect upon the heart if I want to write anything very pathetic I mean if I want to try to write anything very pathetic I eat a large plate full of hot buttered muffins about an hour beforehand and then by the time I sit down to my work a feeling of unutterable melancholy has come over me I picture heartbroken lovers parting forever at lonely wayside styles while the sad twilight deepens around them and only the tinkling of a distant sheet-bell breaks the sorrow laden silence old men sit and gaze at withered flowers till their sight is dimmed by the mist of tears little dainty maidens wait and watch at open casements but he cometh not and the heavy years roll by and the sunny gold tresses wear white and thin the babies that they dandled have become grown men and women with podgy torments of their own and the playmates that they laughed with are lying very silent under the waving grass but still they wait and watch till the dark shadows of the unknown night steal up and gather round them and the world with its childish troubles fades from their aching eyes I see pale corpses tossed on white foamed waves and deathbeds stained with bitter tears and graves in trackless deserts I hear the wild wailing of women the low moaning of little children the dry sobbing of strong men it's all the muffins I could not conjure up one melancholy fancy upon a mutton chop and a glass of champagne a full stomach is a great aid to poetry and indeed no sentiment of any kind can stand upon an empty one we have not time or inclination to indulge in fanciful troubles until we have got rid of our real misfortunes we do not sigh over dead dicky birds with the bailiff in the house and when we do not know where on earth to get our next shilling from we do not worry as to whether our mistresses' smiles are cold or hot or lukewarm or anything else about them foolish people when I say foolish people in this contemptuous way I mean people who entertain different opinions to mine if there is one person I do despise more than another it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do foolish people, I say then, who have never experienced much of either will tell you that mental distress is far more agonising than bodily romantic and touching theory so comforting to the lovesick young sprig who looks down patronisingly at some poor devil with a white starved face and thinks to himself ah, how happy you are compared with me so soothing to fat old gentlemen who cackle about the superiority of poverty over riches but it is all nonsense, all can't an aching head soon makes one forget an aching heart a broken finger will drive away all recollections of an empty chair and when a man feels really hungry he does not feel anything else we sleek well-fed folk can hardly realise what feeling hungry is like we know what it is to have no appetite and not to care for the dainty victuals placed before us but we do not understand what it means to sicken for food to die for bread while others waste it to gaze with famished eyes upon coarse fare steaming behind dingy windows longing for a peneth of pea pudding and not having the penny to buy it to feel that a crust would be delicious and that a bone would be a banquet hunger is a luxury to us a pequant flavour giving sauce it is well worth while to get hungry and thirsty merely to discover how much gratification can be obtained from eating and drinking if you wish to thoroughly enjoy your dinner take a 30 mile country walk after breakfast and don't touch anything till you get back how your eyes will glisten at the sight of the white tablecloth and steaming dishes then then with what a sigh of content you will put down the empty beer-tankered and take up your knife and fork and how comfortable you feel afterward as you push back your chair, light a cigar and beam round upon everybody make sure however when adopting this plan that the good dinner is really to be had at the end or the disappointment is trying I remember once a friend and I, dear old Joe it was ah how we lose one another in life's mist it must be eight years since our last saw Joe Tabois how pleasant it would be to meet his jovial face again to clasp his strong hand and to hear his cheery laugh once more he owes me fourteen shillings too well we were on a holiday together and one morning we had breakfast early and started for a tremendous long walk we had ordered a duck for dinner overnight we said get a big one because we shall come home awfully hungry and as we were going out our landlady came up in great spirits she said I have got you gentlemen a duck if you like if you get through that you'll do well and she held up a bird about the size of a doormat we chuckled at the sight and said we would try we said it with self-conscious pride like men who know their own power then we started we lost our way of course I always do in the country and it makes me so wild because it is no use asking direction of any of the people you meet one might as well inquire of a lodging house slavey the way to make beds as expect a country bumpkin to know the road to the next village you have to shout the question about three times before the sound of your voice penetrates his skull at the third time he slowly raises his head and stares blankly at you you yell it at him then for a fourth time and he repeats it after you he ponders while you count a couple of hundred after which speaking at the rate of three words a minute he answers you couldn't do better than here he catches sight of another idiot coming down the road and balls out to him the particulars requesting his advice the two then argue the case for a quarter of an hour or so and finally agree that you had better go straight down the lane round to the right and cross by the third style and keep to the left by old Jimmy Milcher's cowshed and across the seven-acre field through the gate by Squire Grubbins Haystack keeping the bridle path for a while till you come opposite the hill where the windmill used to be but it's gone now and round to the right leaving Stiggin's plantation behind you and you say thank you and go away with a splitting headache but without the faintest notion of your way the only clear idea you have on the subject being that somewhere or other there is a style which has to be got over and at the next turn you come upon four styles all leading in different directions we had undergone this ordeal two or three times we had tramped over fields we had waded through brooks and scrambled over hedges and walls we had had a row as to whose fault it was that we had first lost our way we got thoroughly disagreeable, footsaw and weary but throughout it all the hope of that duck kept us up a fairy-like vision it floated before our tired eyes and drew us onward the thought of it was as a trumpet call to the fainting we talked of it and cheered each other with our recollections of it come along we said the duck will be spoiled we felt a strong temptation at one point to turn into a village in as we passed and have a cheese and a few loaves between us but we heroically restrained ourselves we should enjoy the duck all the better for being famished we fancied we smelled it when we got into the town and did the last quarter of a mile in three minutes we rushed upstairs and washed ourselves and changed our clothes and came down and pulled our chairs up to the table and sat and rubbed our hands while the landlady removed the covers when I seized the knife and fork and started to carve it seemed to want a lot of carving I struggled with it for about five minutes without making the slightest impression and then Joe, who had been eating potatoes wanted to know if it wouldn't be better for someone to do the job that understood carving I took no notice of his foolish remark but attacked the bird again and so vigorously this time that the animal left the dish and took refuge in the fender we soon had it out of that though and I was prepared to make another effort but Joe was getting unpleasant he said that if he had thought we were to have a game of blind hockey with the dinner he would have got a bit of bread and cheese outside I was too exhausted to argue I laid down the knife and fork with dignity and took a side seat and Joe went for the wretched creature he worked away in silence for a while and then he muttered, damn the duck and took his coat off we did break the thing up at length with the aid of a chisel but it was perfectly impossible to eat it and we had to make a dinner off the vegetables and an apple tart we tried a mouthful of the duck but it was like eating India rubber it was a wicked sin to kill that Drake but there, there's no respect for old institutions in this country I started this paper with the idea of writing about eating and drinking but I seem to have confined my remarks entirely to eating as yet well, you see, drinking is one of those subjects with which it is inadvisable to appear too well acquainted the days are gone by when it was considered manly to go to bed intoxicated every night and a clear head and a firm hand no longer draw down upon their owner the reproach of effeminacy on the contrary, in these sadly degenerate days an evil smelling breath a blotchy face a reeling gait and a husky voice are regarded as the hallmarks of the cad rather than of the gentleman even nowadays though, the thirstiness of mankind is something supernatural we are forever drinking on one excuse or another a man never feels comfortable unless he has a glass before him we drink before meals and with meals and after meals we drink when we meet a friend also when we part from a friend we drink when we are talking when we are reading and when we are thinking we drink one another's health and spoil our own we drink the queen and the army and the ladies and everybody else that is drinkable and I believe if the supply ran short we should drink our mother's in law by the way, we never eat anybody's health always drink it why should we not stand up now and then and eat a tart to somebody's success to me, I confess the constant necessity of drinking under which the majority of men labour is quite unaccountable I can understand people drinking to drown care or to drive away maddening thoughts well enough I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink oh yes, it's very shocking that they should of course very shocking to us who live in cosy homes with all the graces and pleasures of life around us that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public house bar and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a lethy stream of gin but think before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill living what life for these wretched creatures really means picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence dragged on from year to year in the narrow noisome room where huddled like vermin in sewers they welter and sicken and sleep where dirt-grimmed children scream and fight and sluttish shrill-voiced women cuff and curse and nag where the street outside teams with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them devoid of mind and soul the horse in his stall sense the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly the watchdog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand but the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light from the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life recreation, amusement, companionship they know not the meaning of joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair are idle words to them from the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when with an oath they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight they never warm to one touch of human sympathy never thrill to a single thought never start to a single hope in the name of the God of mercy let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live ah, we may talk sentiment as much as we like but the stomach is the real seat of happiness in this world the kitchen is the chief temple wherein we worship its roaring fire is our vestal flame and the cook is our great high priest he is a mighty magician and a kindly one he soothes away all sorrow and care he drives forth all enmity, gladdens all love our God is great and the cook is his prophet let us eat, drink and be merry End of section 11