 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 Chuck Criss, London, UK The Idol Thoughts of an Idol Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome Dedication and Preface To the very dear and well-beloved friend of my prosperous and evil days. To the friend who, though in the early stages of our acquaintanceship did often times disagree with me, has since become to be my very warmest comrade. To the friend who, however often I may put him out, never, now, upsets me in revenge. To the friend who, treated with marked coolness by all the female members of my household and regarded with suspicion by my very dog, nevertheless seems day by day to be more drawn by me, and in return to more and more impregnate me with the odour of his friendship. To the friend who never tells me of my faults, never wants to borrow money, and never talks about himself. To the companion of my idle hours, the soother of my sorrows, the confident of my joys and hopes, my oldest and strongest pipe, this little volume is gratefully and affectionately dedicated. Preface One or two friends to whom I showed these papers in manuscript, having observed that they were not half bad, and some of my relations having promised to buy the book if it ever came out, I feel I have no right to longer delay its issue. But for this, as one may say, public demand, I perhaps should not have ventured to offer these mere idle thoughts of mine as mental food for the English-speaking peoples of the earth. What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading the best hundred books, you may take this up for half an hour. It will be a change. End of dedication and preface. 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 1 On Being Idle Now, this is a subject on which I flatter myself. I really am. Oh, Faye. The gentleman who, when I was young, bathed me at Wisdom's font for nine guineas a term, no extras, used to say he never knew a boy who could do less work in more time. And I remember my poor grandmother once incidentally observing in the course of an instruction upon the use of the prayer book that it was highly improbable that I should ever do much that I ought not to do, but that she felt convinced beyond a doubt that I should leave undone pretty well everything that I ought to do. I am afraid I have somewhat belied half the dear old lady's prophecy. Heaven help me. I have done a good many things that I ought not to have done in spite of my laziness. But I have fully confirmed the accuracy of her judgment so far as neglecting much that I ought not to have neglected is concerned. Idling always has been my strong point. I take no credit to myself in the matter. It is a gift. Few possess it. There are plenty of lazy people and plenty of slow coaches, but a genuine idler is a rarity. He is not a man who slouches about with his hands in his pockets. On the contrary, his most startling characteristic is that he is always intensely busy. It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation, then, and the most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen. Many years ago, when I was a young man, I was taken very ill. I never could see myself that much was the matter with me, except that I had a beastly cold. But I suppose it was something very serious, for the doctor said that I ought to have come to him a month before, and that if it, whatever it was, had gone on for another week, he would not have answered for the consequences. It is an extraordinary thing, but I never knew a doctor called into any case yet, but what it transpired that another day's delay would have rendered cure hopeless. Our medical guide, philosopher, and friend is like the hero in a melodrama. He always comes upon the scene just and only just in the nick of time. It is providence. That is what it is. Well, as I was saying, I was very ill, and was ordered to Buxton for a month with strict injunctions to do nothing whatever all the while that I was there. Rest is what you require, said the doctor. Perfect rest. It seemed a delightful prospect. This man evidently understands my complaint, said I, and I pictured to myself a glorious time, a four-weeks dolce far niente with a dash of illness in it. Not too much illness, but just illness enough, just sufficient to give it the flavour of suffering and make it poetical. I should get up late, sip chocolate, and have my breakfast in slippers and a dressing-gown. I should lie out in the garden in a hammock, and read sentimental novels with a melancholy ending until the books should fall from my listless hand, and I should recline there dreamily gazing into the deep blue of the firmament, watching the fleecy clouds floating like white sail ships across its depths, and listening to the joyous song of the birds and the low rustling of the trees. Or, on becoming too weak to go out of doors, I should sit propped up with pillows at the open window of the ground-floor front and look wasted and interesting, so that all the pretty girls would sigh as they passed by. And twice a day I should go down in a bath-chair to the colonnade to drink the waters. Oh, those waters! I knew nothing about them then, and was rather taken with the idea. Drinking the waters sounded fashionable and queen-an-fide, and I thought I should like them. But, oh, after the first three or four mornings, Sam Weller's description of them as having a taste of warm, flat irons conveys only a faint idea of their hideous nauseousness. If anything could make a sick man get well quickly, it would be the knowledge that he must drink a glassful of them every day until he was recovered. I drank them neat for six consecutive days, and they nearly killed me. But after then I adopted the plan of taking a stiff glass of brandy and water immediately on the top of them, and found much relief thereby. I have been informed since by various eminent medical gentlemen that the alcohol must have entirely counteracted the effects of the calibate properties contained in the water. I am glad I was lucky enough to hit upon the right thing. But drinking the waters was only a small portion of the torture I experienced during that memorable month. A month which was, without exception, the most miserable I have ever spent. During the best part of it I religiously followed the doctor's mandate and did nothing whatever, except moon about the house and garden, and go out for two hours a day in a bath-chair. That did break the monotony to a certain extent. There is more excitement about bath-chairing, especially if you are not used to the exhilarating exercise, than might appear to the casual observer. A sense of danger such as a mere outsider might not understand is ever present to the mind of the occupant. He feels convinced every minute that the whole concern is going over. A conviction which becomes especially lively whenever a ditch or a stretch of newly macadamized road comes in sight. Every vehicle that passes he expects is going to run into him, and he never finds himself ascending or descending a hill without immediately beginning to speculate upon his chances, supposing, as seems extremely probable, that the weak-need controller of his destiny should let go. But even this diversion failed to enliven after a while, and the ennui became perfectly unbearable. I felt my mind giving way under it. It is not a strong mind, and I thought it would be unwise to tax it too far. So somewhere about the twentieth morning I got up early, had a good breakfast, and walked straight off to Hayfield, at the foot of the Kinder Scout. A pleasant, busy little town, reached through a lovely valley, and with two sweetly pretty women in it. At least they were sweetly pretty then. One passed me on the bridge and, I think, smiled, and the other was standing at an open door, making an unremunerative investment of kisses upon a red-faced baby. But it is years ago, and I daresay they have both grown stout and snappish since that time. Coming back I saw an old man breaking stones, and it roused such strong longing in me to use my arms that I offered him a drink to let me take his place. He was a kindly old man, and he humoured me. I went for those stones with the accumulated energy of three weeks, and did more work in half an hour than he had done all day. But it did not make him jealous. Having taken the plunge, I went further and further into dissipation, going out for a long walk every morning, and listening to the band in the pavilion every evening. But the days still passed slowly, notwithstanding, and I was heartily glad when the last one came, and I was being whirled away from goutique and summative Buxton to London with its stern work and life. I looked out of the carriage as we rushed through Hendon in the evening. The lurid glare overhanging the mighty city seemed to warm my heart, and when, later on, my cab rattled out of St Pancras station, the old familiar roar that came swelling up around me sounded the sweetest music I had heard for many a long day. I certainly did not enjoy that month's idling. I like idling when I ought not to be idling, not when it's the only thing I have to do. That is my pig-headed nature. The time when I like best to stand with my back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when my desk is heat-highest with letters that must be answered by the next post. When I like to dawdle longest over my dinner, is when I have a heavy evening's work before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to be up particularly early in the morning, it is then more than at any other time that I love to lie an extra half-hour in bed. Ah, how delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again just for five minutes. Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the hero of a Sunday-school tale for boys who ever gets up willingly? There are some men to whom getting up at the proper time is an utter impossibility. If eight o'clock happens to be the time that they should turn out, then they lie till half-past. If circumstances change, and half-past eight becomes early enough for them, then it is nine before they can rise. They are like the statesman of whom it was said that he was always punctually half-an-hour late. They try all manner of schemes. They buy alarm clocks, artful contrivances that go off at the wrong time and alarm the wrong people. They tell Sarah Jane to knock at the door and call them, and Sarah Jane does knock at the door and does call them, and they grunt back, all right, and then go comfortably to sleep again. I knew one man who would actually get out and have a cold bath, and even that was of no use, for afterward he would jump into bed again to warm himself. I think myself that I could keep out of bed all right if I once got out. It is the wrenching away of the head from the pillow that I find so hard, and no amount of overnight determination makes it easier. I say to myself, after having wasted the whole evening, well, I won't do any more work tonight, I'll get up early tomorrow morning, and I'm thoroughly resolved to do so, then. In the morning, however, I feel less enthusiastic about the idea, and reflect that it would have been much better if I had stopped up last night. And then there is the trouble of dressing, and the more one thinks about that, the more one wants to put it off. It is a strange thing, this bed, this mimic grave, where we stretch our tired limbs and sink away so quietly into the silence and rest. Oh, bed, oh, bed, delicious bed, that heaven on earth to the weary head, as sang poor Hood, you were a kind old nurse to a spritful boys and girls. Clever and foolish, naughty and good, you take us all in your motherly lap and hush our wayward crying, the strong man full of care, the sick man full of pain, the little maiden sobbing for her faithless lover. Like children we lay our aching heads on your white bosom, you gently soothe us off to bye-bye. Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not comfort us. How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep. All those hideous nights when we toss and turn in fever and pain, when we lie like living men among the dead, staring out into the dark hours that drift so slowly between us and the light. And oh, those still more hideous nights when we sit by another in pain, when the low fire startles us every now and then with a falling cinder and the tick of the clock seems a hammer beating out the life that we are watching. But enough of beds and bedrooms, I've kept to them too long even for an idle fellow. Let us come out and have a smoke. That wastes time just as well and does not look so bad. Tobacco has been a blessing to us idlers. What the civil service clerk before Sir Walter's time found to occupy their minds with, it is hard to imagine. I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages, young men, entirely to the want of the soothing weed. They had no work to do and could not smoke, and the consequence was that they were forever fighting and rowing. If by any extraordinary chance there was no war going, then they got up a deadly family feud with the next door neighbour. And if in spite of this they still had a few spare moments on their hands, they occupied them with discussions as to whose sweetheart was the best looking. The arguments employed on both sides being battle-axes, clubs, etc. Questions of taste were soon decided in those days. When a twelfth-century youth fell in love, he did not take three paces backward, gaze into her eyes and tell her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head, the other man's head, I mean, then that proved that his, the first fellow's, girl was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke his head, not his own, you know, but the other fellow's, the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who, well, if, if he broke his head, then his girl, not the other fellow's, but the fellow who was, look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girl was a pretty girl. But if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a pretty girl, but B's girl was. That was their method of conducting art criticism. Nowadays we light a pipe and let the girls fight it out among themselves. They do it very well. They are getting to do all our work. They are doctors and baristas and artists. They manage theaters and promote swindles and edit newspapers. I'm looking forward to the time when we men shall have nothing to do but lie in bed till twelve, read two novels a day, have nice little five o'clock teas all to ourselves, and tax our brains with nothing more trying than discussions upon the latest patterns in trousers and arguments as to what Mr. Jones's coat was made of and whether it fitted him. It is a glorious prospect for idle fellows. End of section one. 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 two. On being in love. You've been in love, of course. If not, you've got it to come. Love is like the measles. We all have to go through it. Also, like the measles, we take it only once. One never need be afraid of catching it a second time. The man who has had it can go into the most dangerous places and play the most foolhardy tricks with perfect safety. He can picnic in shady woods, ramble through leafy aisles, and linger on mossy seats to watch the sunset. He fears a quiet country house no more than he would his own club. He can join a family party to go down the Rhine. He can, to see the last of a friend, venture into the very jaws of the marriage ceremony itself. He can keep his head through the whirl of a ravishing waltz, and rest afterward in a dark conservatory, catching nothing more lasting than a cold. He can brave a moonlight walk, a down sweet-centred lanes, or a twilight pull among the somber rushes. He can get over a style without danger, scramble through a tangled hedge without being caught, come down a slippery path without falling. He can look into sunny eyes and not be dazzled. He listens to the siren voices, yet sails on with unveered helm. He clasps white hands in his, but no electric lulu-like force holds him bound in their dainty pressure. No, we never sicken with love twice. Cupid spends no second arrow on the same heart. Love's handmaids are our lifelong friends. Respect and admiration and affection our doors may always be left open for, but their great celestial master in his royal progress pays but one visit and departs. We like, we cherish, we are very, very fond of, but we never love again. A man's heart is a firework that once in its time flashes heavenward. Meteor-like it blazes for a moment and lights with its glory the whole world beneath. Then the night of our sordid commonplace life closes in around it, and the burned-out case falling back to earth lies useless and uncared for, slowly smouldering into ashes. Once, breaking loose from our prison bonds, we dare as mighty old Prometheus dared to scale the Olympian mount and snatch from Phoebus' chariot the fire of the gods. Happy those who hastening down again ere it dies out can kindle their earthly altars at its flame. Love is too pure a light to burn long among the noisome gases that we breathe, but before it is choked out we may use it as a torch to ignite the cosy fire of affection. And, after all, that warming glow is more suited to our cold little back-parlor of a world than is the burning spirit, love. Love should be the vestal fire of some mighty temple, some vast dim fane whose organ music is the rolling of the spheres. Affection will burn cheerily when the white flame of love is flickered out. Affection is a fire that can be fed from day to day and be piled up ever higher as the wintry years draw nigh. Old men and women can sit by it with their thin hands clasped. The little children can nestle down in front. The friend and neighbour has his welcome corner by its side and even shaggy fido and sleek titty can toast their noses at the bars. Let us heap the coals of kindness upon that fire. Throw on your pleasant words, your gentle pressures of the hand, your thoughtful and unselfish deeds. Fan it with good humour, patience and forbearance. You can let the wind blow and the rain fall unheeded then, for your hearth will be warm and bright and the faces round it will make sunshine in spite of the clouds without. I am afraid, dear Edwin and Angelina, you expect too much from love. You think there is enough of your little hearts to feed this fierce devouring passion for all your long lives. Ah, young folk, don't rely too much upon that unsteady flicker. It will dwindle and dwindle as the months roll on and there is no replenishing the fuel. You will watch it die out in anger and disappointment. To each it will seem that it is the other who is growing colder. Edwin sees with bitterness that Angelina no longer runs to the gate to meet him. All smiles and blushes. And when he has a cough now, she doesn't begin to cry and putting her arms around his neck say that she cannot live without him. The most she will probably do is to suggest a lozenge and even that in a tone implying that it is the noise more than anything else she is anxious to get rid of. Poor little Angelina too sheds silent tears. For Edwin has given up carrying her old handkerchief in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. Both are astonished at the falling off in the other one. But neither sees their own change. If they did, they would not suffer as they do. They would look for the cause in the right quarter, in the littleness of poor human nature, join hands over their common failing and start building their house anew on a more earthly and enduring foundation. But we are so blind to our own shortcomings, so wide awake to those of others. Everything that happens to us is always the other person's fault. Angelina would have gone on loving Edwin for ever and ever and ever if only Edwin had not grown so strange and different. Edwin would have adored Angelina through eternity if Angelina had only remained the same as when he first adored her. It is a cheerless hour for you both when the lamp of love has gone out and the fire of affection is not yet lit and you have to grop about in the cold raw dawn of life to kindle it. God grant it captures light before the day is too far spent. Many sit shivering by the dead coals till night come. But there, of what use is it to preach? Who that feels the rush of young love through his veins can think that it will ever flow feeble and slow? To the boy of twenty it seems impossible that he will not love as wildly at sixty as he does then. He cannot call to mind any middle-aged or elderly gentleman of his acquaintance who is known to exhibit symptoms of frantic attachment but that does not interfere in his belief in himself. His love will never fall whoever else's may. Nobody ever loved as he loves and so, of course, the rest of the world's experience can be no guide in his case. Alas! Alas! Air-thirty he has joined the ranks of the sneerers. It is not his fault. Our passions, both the good and bad, cease with our blushers. We do not hate nor grieve nor joy nor despair in our thirties like we did in our teens. Disappointment does not suggest suicide and we quaff success without intoxication. We take all things in a minor key as we grow older. There are few majestic passages in the later acts of life's opera. Ambition takes a less ambitious aim. Honor becomes more reasonable and conveniently adapts itself to circumstances and love, love dies. Irreverence for the dreams of youth soon creeps like a killing frost upon our hearts. The tender shoots and the expanding flowers are nipped and withered and of a vine that yearn to stretch its tendrils round the world there is left but a sapless stump. My fair friends will deem all this rank heresy, I know. So far from a man's not loving after he has passed boyhood it is not till there is a good deal of grey in his hair that they think his protestations at all worthy of attention. Young ladies take their notions of our sex from the novels written by their own and compared with the monstrosities that masquerade for men in the pages of that nightmare literature Pythagoras' plucked bird and Frankenstein's demon were fair average specimens of humanity. In these so-called books the chief lover or Greek god as he is admiringly referred to by the way they do not say which Greek god it is that the gentlemen bear such a striking likeness to it might be humpbacked Vulcan or double-faced Janus or even driveling Silenus the god of abstruse mysteries. He resembles the whole family of them however in being a blaggard and perhaps this is what is meant. To even the little manliness his classical prototypes possessed though he can lay no claim whatever being a listless effeminate noodle on the shady side of Forty. But oh the depth and strength of this elderly party's emotion for some bread-and-butter schoolgirl hide your heads ye young Romeo's and Leander's this blasé old bow loves with an hysterical fervour that requires four adjectives to every noun to properly describe it is well dear ladies for us old sinners that you study only books did you read mankind you would know that the lads shy stammering tells a truer tale than our bold eloquence a boy's love comes from a full heart a man's is more often the result of a full stomach indeed a man's sluggish current may not be called love compared with the rushing fountain that wells up when a boy's heart is struck with the heavenly rod if you would taste love drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves or is it that you like its bitter flavour that the clear limpid water is insipid to your palate and that the pollution of its after-course gives it a relish to your lips must we believe those who tell us that a hand foul with the filth of a shameful life is the only one a young girl cares to be caressed by that is the teaching that is balled out day by day from between those yellow covers do they ever pause to think I wonder those devil's lady helps what mischief they are doing crawling about God's garden and telling childish eaves and silly adams that sin is sweet and that decency is ridiculous and vulgar how many an innocent girl do they not degrade into an evil-minded woman to how many a weak lad do they not point out the dirty by-path as the shortest cut to a maiden's heart it is not as if they wrote of life as it really is speak truth and right will take care of itself but their pictures are coarse-dorbs painted from the sickly fancies of their own diseased imagination we want to think of women not as their own sex would show them as lorries luring us to destruction but as good angels beckoning us upward they have more power for good or evil than they dream of it is just at the very age when a man's character is forming that he tumbles into love and then the last he loves has the making or marring of him unconsciously he moulds himself to what she would have him good or bad I am sorry to have to be un-galant enough to say that I do not think they always use their influence for the best too often the female world is bounded hard and fast within the limits of the common place their ideal hero is a prince of littleness and to become that many a powerful mind enchanted by love is lost to life and use and name and fame and yet women you could make us so much better if you only would it rests with you more than with all the preachers to roll this world a little nearer heaven chivalry is not dead it only sleeps for want of work to do it is you who must wake it to noble deeds you must be worthy of nightly worship you must be higher than ourselves it was for eunuch that the Red Cross night did war for no painted mincing court dame could the dragon have been slain oh ladies fair be fair in mind and soul as well as face so that brave knights may win glory in your service oh woman throw off your disguising cloaks of selfishness effrontery and affectation stand forth once more a queen in your royal robe of simple purity a thousand swords now rusting in ignoble sloth shall leap from their scabbards to do battle for your honor against wrong a thousand serolents shall lay lance in rest and fear avarice pleasure and ambition shall go down in the dust before your collars what noble deeds were we not ripe for in the days when we loved what noble lives could we not have lived for her sake our love was a religion we could have died for it was no mere human creature like ourselves that we adored it was a queen that we paid homage to a goddess that we worship and how madly we did worship how sweet it was to worship ah lad cherish love's young dream while it lasts you will know too soon how truly little Tom Moore sang when he said that there was nothing half so sweet in life even when it brings misery it is a wild romantic misery all unlike the dull worldly pain of after sorrows when you have lost her when the light is gone out from your life and the world stretches before you a long dark horror even then a half enchantment mingles with your despair and who would not risk its terrors to gain its raptures ah what raptures they were the mere recollection thrills you how delicious it was to tell her that you loved her that you lived for her that you would die for her how you did rave to be sure what floods of extravagant nonsense you poured forth and oh how cruel it was of her to pretend not to believe you in what awe you stood of her how miserable you were when you had offended her and yet how pleasant to be bullied by her and to sue for pardon without having the slightest notion of what your fault was how dark the world was when she snubbed you as she often did the little rogue just to see you look wretched how sunny when she smiled how jealous you were of everyone about her how you hated every man she shook hands with every woman she kissed the maid that did her hair the boy that cleaned her shoes the dog she nursed though you had to be respectful to the last named how you looked forward to seeing her how stupid you were when you did see her staring at her without saying a word how impossible it was for you to go out at any time of the day or night without finding yourself eventually opposite her windows you hadn't pluck enough to go in but you hung about the corner and gazed at the outside oh if the house had only caught fire it was insured so it wouldn't have mattered and you could have rushed in and saved her at the risk of your life and have been terribly burned and injured to serve her even in little things that were so sweet how you would watch her spaniel-like to anticipate her slightest wish how proud you were to do her bidding how delightful it was to be ordered about by her to devote your whole life to her and to never think of yourself seemed such a simple thing you would go without a holiday to lay a humble offering at her shrine and felt more than repaid if she only deigned to accept it how precious to you was everything that she had hallowed by her touch her little glove the ribbon she had worn the rose that had nestled in her hair and whose withered leaves still mark the poems you never care to look at now and oh how beautiful she was how wondrous beautiful it was as some angel entering the room and all else became plain and earthly she was too sacred to be touched it seemed almost presumption to gaze at her you would as soon have thought of kissing her as of singing comic songs in a cathedral it was desecration enough to kneel and timidly raise the gracious little hand to your lips ah those foolish days those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth and faith and reverence ah those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings and oh these wise clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies when we care for no living creature but ourselves end of section 2 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 3 on being in the blues I can enjoy feeling melancholy and there is a good deal of satisfaction about being thoroughly miserable but nobody likes a fit of the blues nevertheless everybody has them notwithstanding which nobody can tell why there is no accounting for them you are just as likely to have one on the day after you have come into a large fortune as on the day after you have left your new silk umbrella in the train its effect upon you is somewhat similar to what would probably be produced by a combined attack of toothache, indigestion and cold in the head you become stupid, restless and irritable rude to strangers and dangerous toward your friends clumsy, maudlin and quarrelsome and nuisance to yourself and everybody about you while it is on you can do nothing and think of nothing though feeling at the time bound to do something you can't sit still so put on your hat and go for a walk but before you get to the corner of the street you wish you hadn't come out and you turn back you open a book and try to read but you find Shakespeare trite and commonplace Dickens is dull and prosy Thackeray a bore and Carlisle too sentimental you throw the book aside and call the author names then you shoe the cat out of the room and kick the door to after her you think you will write your letters but after sticking at dearest auntie I find I have five minutes to spare and so hasten to write to you for a quarter of an hour without being able to think of another sentence you tumble the paper into the desk fling the wet pen down upon the tablecloth and start up with the resolution of going to see the Thompson's while pulling on your gloves however it occurs to you that the Thompson's are idiots that they never have supper and that you will be expected to jump the baby you curse the Thompson's and decide not to go by this time you feel completely crushed you bury your face in your hands and think you would like to die and go to heaven you picture to yourself your own sick bed with all your friends and relations standing round you weeping you bless them all especially the young and pretty ones they will value you when you are gone so you say to yourself and learn too late what they have lost and you bitterly contrast their presumed regard for you then with their decided want of veneration now these reflections make you feel a little more cheerful but only for a brief period for the next moment you think what a fool you must be to imagine for an instant that anybody would be sorry at anything that might happen to you who would care two straws whatever precise amount of care two straws may represent whether you are blown up or hung up or married or drowned nobody cares for you you never have been properly appreciated never met with your due desserts in any one particular you review the whole of your past life and it is painfully apparent that you have been ill-used from your cradle half an hour's indulgence in these considerations works you up into a state of savage fury against everybody and everything especially yourself whom anatomical reasons alone prevent your kicking bedtime at last comes to save you from doing something rash and you spring upstairs throw off your clothes leaving them strewn all over the room blow out the candle and jump into bed as if you had backed yourself for a heavy wager to do the whole thing against time there you toss and tumble about for a couple of hours or so varying the monotony by occasionally jerking the clothes off and getting out and putting them on again at length you drop into an uneasy and fitful slumber have bad dreams and wake up late the next morning at least this is all we poor single men can do under the circumstances married men bully their wives grumble at the dinner and insist on the children's going to bed all of which creating as it does a good deal of disturbance in the house must be a great relief to the feelings of a man in the blues Rouse being the only form of amusement in which he can take any interest the symptoms of the infirmity are much the same in every case but the affliction itself is variously termed the poet says that a feeling of sadness comes ear him Ari refers to the heavings of his wayward heart by confiding to Jimmy that he has got the blooming hump your sister doesn't know what is the matter with her tonight she feels out of sorts altogether and hopes nothing is going to happen the everyday young man is so awful glad to meet you old fellow for he does feel so jolly miserable this evening as for myself I generally say that I have a strange unsettled feeling tonight and think I'll go out by the way it never does come except in the evening in the sun time when the world is bounding forward full of life we cannot stay to sigh and sulk the roar of the working day drowns the voices of the elfin sprites that are ever singing their low toned misery in our ears in the day we are angry, disappointed or indignant but never in the blues and never melancholy when things go wrong at ten o'clock in the morning we, or rather you, swear and knock the furniture about but if the misfortune comes at ten p.m. we read poetry or sit in the dark and think what a hollow world this is but as a rule it is not trouble that makes us melancholy the actuality is too stern a thing for sentiment we linger to weep over a picture but from the original we should quickly turn our eyes away there is no pathos in real misery no luxury in real grief we do not toy with sharp swords nor hug annoying fox to our breast for choice when a man or woman loves to brood over a sorrow and takes care to keep it green in their memory you may be sure it is no longer a pain to them however they may have suffered from it at first the recollection has become by then a pleasure many dear old ladies who daily look at tiny shoes lying in lavender-centred drawers and weep as they think of the tiny feet whose toddling march is done and sweet-faced young ones who place each night beneath their pillow some lock that once curled on a boyish head that the salt waves have kissed to death will call me a nasty, cynical brute and say I'm talking nonsense but I believe nevertheless that if they will ask themselves truthfully whether they find it unpleasant to dwell thus on their sorrow they will be compelled to answer no tears are as sweet as laughter to some natures the proverbial Englishman we know from old chronicler Freud's art takes his pleasures sadly and the English woman goes a step further and takes her pleasures in sadness itself I am not sneering I would not for a moment sneer at anything that helps to keep hearts tender in this hard old world we men are cold and common-sensed enough for all we would not have women the same no, no ladies dear be always sentimental and soft-hearted as you are be the soothing butter to our coarse dry bread besides, sentiment is to women what fun is to us they do not care for our humour surely it would be unfair to deny them their grief and who shall say that their mode of enjoyment is not as sensible as ours why assume that a doubled-up body a contorted purple face and a gaping mouth emitting a series of ear-splitting shrieks point to a state of more intelligent happiness than a pensive face reposing upon a little white hand and a pair of gentle, tear-dimmed eyes looking back through time's dark avenue upon a fading past I am glad when I see regret walked with as a friend glad because I know the saltiness has been washed from out the tears and that the sting must have been plucked from the beautiful face of sorrow ere we dare press her pale lips to ours time has laid his healing hand upon the wound when we can look back upon the pain we once fainted under and no bitterness or despair rises in our hearts the burden is no longer heavy when we have for our past troubles only the same sweet mingling of pleasure and pity that we feel when old night-hearted Colonel Newcomb answers add some to the great roll-call or when Tom and Maggie Tulliver clasping hands through the mists that have divided them go down locked in each other's arms beneath the swollen waters of the floss talking of poor Tom and Maggie Tulliver brings to my mind a saying of George Eliot's in connection with this subject of melancholy she speaks somewhere of the sadness of a summer's evening how wonderfully true, like everything that came from that wonderful pen the observation is who has not felt the sorrowful enchantment of those lingering sunsets the world belongs to melancholy then a thoughtful, deep-eyed maiden who loves not the glare of day it is not till light thickens and the crow wings to the rocky wood that she steals forth from her groves her palace is in twilight land it is there she meets us at her shadowy gate she takes our hand in hers and walks beside us through her mystic realm we see no form but seem to hear the rustling of her wings even in the toiling, humdrum city her spirit comes to us there is a somber presence in each long, dull street and the dark river creeps ghost-like under the black arches as if bearing some hidden secret beneath its muddy waves in the silent country when the trees and hedges loom dim and blurred against the rising night and the bat's wing flutters in our face and the land-rails cry sounds drearily across the fields the spell sinks deeper still into our hearts we seem in that hour to be standing by some unseen death-bed and in the swaying of the elms we hear the sigh of the dying day a solemn sadness reigns a great peace is around us in its light our cares of the working day grow small and trivial and bread and cheese, eye and even kisses do not seem the only things worth striving for thoughts we cannot speak but only listen to flood in upon us and standing in the stillness under earth's darkening dome we feel that we are greater than our petty lives hung round with those dusky curtains the world is no longer a mere dingy workshop but a stately temple wherein man may worship and where at times in the dimness his groping hands touch God's End of Section 3 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 4 On Being Hard Up It is a most remarkable thing I sat down with the full intention of writing something clever and original but for the life of me I can't think of anything clever and original at least not at this moment the only thing I can think about now is being hard up I suppose having my hands in my pockets has made me think about this I always do sit with my hands in my pockets except when I'm in the company of my sisters, my cousins or my aunts and they kick up such a shindy, I should say expostulate so eloquently upon the subject that I have to give in and take them out my hands I mean the chorus to their objections is that it is not gentlemanly I am hanged if I can see why I could understand it's not being considered gentlemanly to put your hands in other people's pockets especially by the other people but how, oh ye sticklers for what looks this and what looks that can putting his hands in his own pockets make a man less gentle perhaps you are right though now I come to think of it I have heard some people grumble most savagely when doing it but they were mostly old gentlemen we young fellows as a ruler never quite at ease unless we have our hands in our pockets we're awkward and shifty we are like what a music hall lion cameek would be without his opera hat if such a thing can be imagined but let us put our hands in our trousers pockets and let there be some small change in the right hand one and a bunch of keys in the left and we will face a female post office clerk it is a little difficult to know what to do with your hands even in your pockets when there is nothing else there years ago when my whole capital would occasionally come down to what in town the people call a bob I would recklessly spend a penny of it merely for the sake of having the change all in coppers to jingle you don't feel nearly so hard up with eleven pence in your pocket as you do with the shilling had I been lardida that impecunious youth about whom we superior focus so sarcastic I would have changed my penny for two haypenes I can speak with authority on the subject of being hard up I have been a provincial actor if further evidence be required which I do not think likely I can add that I have been a gentleman connected with the press I have lived on fifteen shilling a week I have lived a week on ten owing the other five and I have lived for a fortnight on a great coat it is wonderful what an insight into domestic economy being really hard up gives one if you want to find out the value of money live on fifteen shillings a week and see how much you can put by for clothes and recreation you will find out that it is worthwhile to wait for the farthing change that it is worthwhile to walk a mile to save a penny that a glass of beer is a luxury to be indulged in only at rare intervals and that a collar can be worn for four days try it just before you get married it will be excellent practice let your son and heir try it before sending him to college he won't grumble at a hundred a year pocket money then there are some people to whom it would do a world of good there is that delicate blossom who can't drink any claret under ninety-four and who would assume think of dining off cat's meat as off plain roast mutton you do come across these poor wretches now and then though to the credit of humanity they are principally confined to that fearful and wonderful society known only to lady novelists I never hear of one of these creatures discussing a menu card but I feel a mad desire to drag him off to the bar at some common east end public house and he'll come cram a six penny dinner down his throat beef steak pudding, forpins, potatoes, a penny, half a pint of porter, a penny the recollection of it and the mingled fragrance of beer, tobacco and roast pork generally leaves a vivid impression might induce him to turn up his nose a little less frequently in the future at everything that is put before him then there is that generous party, the Kadja's Delight with his small change but who never thinks of paying his debts it might teach even him a little common sense I always give the waiter a shilling one can't give the fellow less, you know explained a young government clerk with whom I was lunching the other day in Regent Street I agreed with him as to the utter impossibility of making it eleven-pence apony but at the same time I resolved to one day decoy him to an eating-house I remembered near Covent Garden where the waiter, for the better discharge of his duties, goes about in his shirt sleeves and very dirty sleeves they are too when it gets near the end of the month I know that waiter if my friend gives him anything beyond a penny the man will insist on shaking hands with him then and there as a mark of his esteem of that I feel sure there have been a good many funny things said and written about hard upishness but the reality is not funny for all that it is not funny to have to haggle over pennies it isn't funny to be thought mean and stingy it isn't funny to be shabby and to be ashamed of your address no there is nothing at all funny in poverty to the poor it is hell upon earth to a sensitive man a many a brave gentleman who would have faced the labours of Hercules has had his heart broken by its petty miseries it is not the actual discomforts themselves that are hard to bear who would mind roughing it a bit if that were all it meant what cared Robinson Crusoe for a patch on his trousers did he wear trousers I forget or did he go about as he does in the pantomimes what did it matter to him if his toes did stick out of his boots and what if his umbrella was a cotton one so long as it kept the rain off his shabbiness did not trouble him there was none of his friends round about to sneer him being poor is a mere trifle it is being known to be poor that is the sting it is not cold that makes a man without a great coat hurry along so quickly it is not all shame at telling lies which he knows will not be believed that makes him turn so red when he informs you that he considers great coats unhealthy and never carries an umbrella on principle it is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime no if it were men wouldn't be ashamed of it it's a blunder though and is punished as such a poor man is despised the whole world over despised as much by a Christian as by a Lord as much by a demagogue as by a footman and not all the copy book maxims ever set for ink stained youth will make him respected appearances are everything so far as human opinion goes and the man who will walk down Piccadilly arm in arm with the most notorious scamp in London provided he is a well-dressed one will slink up a back street to say a couple of words to a seedy looking gentleman and the seedy looking gentleman knows this no one better and will go a mile round to avoid meeting an acquaintance those that knew him in his prosperity need never trouble themselves to look the other way he is a thousand times more anxious that they should not see him than they can be and as to their assistance there is nothing he dreads more than the offer of it all he wants is to be forgotten and in this respect he is generally fortunate enough to get what he wants one becomes used to being hard up as one becomes used to everything else by the help of that wonderful old homeopathic doctor time you can tell at a glance the difference between the old hand and the novice between the case hardened man who has been used to shift and struggle for years and the poor devil of a beginner striving to hide his misery and in a constant agony of fear lest he should be found out nothing shows this difference more clearly than the way in which each will porn his watch as the poet says somewhere true ease in pawning comes from art not chance the one goes into his uncles with as much composure as he would into his tailors very likely with more the assistant is even civil and attends to him at once to the great indignation of the lady in the next box who however sarcastically observes that she don't mind being kept waiting if it is a regular customer why from the pleasant and business like manner in which the transaction is carried out it might be a large purchase in the three percents yet what a piece of work a man makes of his first pop a boy popping his first question is confidence itself compared with him he hangs about outside the shop until he has succeeded in attracting the attention of all the loafers in the neighbourhood and has aroused strong suspicions in the mind of the policeman on the beat at last after a careful examination of the contents of the windows made for the purpose of impressing the bystanders with the notion that he is going in to purchase a diamond bracelet with some such trifle he enters trying to do so with a careless swagger and giving himself really the air of a member of the swell mob when inside he speaks in so low a voice as to be perfectly inaudible and has to say it all over again when in the course of his rambling conversation about a friend of his the word lend is reached he is promptly told to go up the court on the right and take the first door round the corner he comes out of the shop with a face that you could easily light a cigarette at and firmly under the impression that the whole population of the district is watching him when he does get to the right place he has forgotten his name and address and is in a general condition of hopeless imbecility asked in a severe tone how he came by this he stammers and contradicts himself and it is only a miracle if he does not confess to having stolen it that very day he is there upon informed that they don't want anything to do with his sort and that he had better get out of this as quickly as possible which he does recollecting nothing more until he finds himself three miles off without the slightest knowledge how he got there by the way how awkward it is though having to depend on public houses and churches for the time the former are generally too fast and the latter too slow besides which your efforts to get a glimpse of the public house clock from the outside are attended with great difficulties if you gently push the swing door ajar and peer in you draw upon yourself the contemptuous looks of the barmaid who at once puts you down in the same category with area sneaks and cages you also create a certain amount of agitation among the married portion of the customers you don't see the clock because it is behind the door and in trying to withdraw quietly you jam your head the only other method is to jump up and down outside the window after this latter proceeding however if you do not bring out a banjo and commence to sing the youthful inhabitants of the neighbourhood who have gathered round in expectation become disappointed I should like to know too by what mysterious law of nature it is that before you have left your watch to be repaired half an hour someone is sure to stop you in the street and conspicuously ask you the time nobody even feels the slightest curiosity on the subject when you've got it on dear old ladies and gentlemen who know nothing about being hard up and may they never bless their grey old heads look upon the pawn shop as the last stage of degradation but those who know it better and my readers have no doubt noticed this themselves are often surprised like the little boy who dreamed he went to heaven at meeting so many people there that they never expected to see for my part I think it a much more independent course than borrowing from friends and I always try to impress this upon those of my acquaintance who inclined toward wanting a couple of pounds till the day after tomorrow but they won't all see it one of them once remarked that he objected to the principle of the thing I fancy if he had said it was the interest that he objected to he would have been nearer the truth 25% certainly does come heavy there are degrees in being hard up we are all hard up more or less most of us more some are hard up for a thousand pounds some for a shilling just at this moment I am hard up myself for a fiver I only want it for a day or two I should be certain of paying it back within a week at the outside and if any lady or gentleman among my readers would kindly lend it to me I should be very much obliged indeed they could send it to me undercover to Messers Field and Tuer only in such case please let the envelope be carefully sealed I would give you my IOU as security end of section 4 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 5 on vanity and vanities all is vanity and everybody's vain women are terribly vain so are men more so if possible so are children particularly children one of them at this very moment is hammering upon my legs she wants to know what I think of her new shoes candidly I don't think much of them they lack symmetry and curve and possess an indescribable appearance of lumpiness I believe too they've put them on the wrong feet but I don't say this it is not criticism but flattery that she wants and I gush over them with what I feel to myself to be degrading effusiveness nothing else would satisfy this self-opinionated cherub I tried the conscientious friend dodge with her on one occasion but it was not a success she had requested my judgement upon her general conduct and behaviour the exact case submitted being what who think of me who appeased with me and I had thought it a good opportunity to make a few salutary remarks upon her late moral career and said no I am not pleased with you I recalled to her mind the events of that very morning and I put it to her how she as a Christian child could expect a wise and good uncle to be satisfied with the carrying zone of an infant who that very day had roused the whole house at 5am had upset a water jug and tumbled downstairs after it at 7 had endeavoured to put the cat in the bath at 8 and sat on her own father's hat at 9.35 what did she do was she grateful to me for my plain speaking did she ponder upon my words and determine to profit by them and to lead from that hour a better and nobler life no she howled that done she became abusive she said who naughty, who naughty badunkey who badman me tell ma and she did too since then when my views have been called for I have kept my real sentiments more to myself like preferring to express unbounded admiration of this young person's actions irrespective of their actual merits and she nods her head approvingly and trots off to advertise my opinion to the rest of the household she appears to employ it as a sort of testimonial for mercenary purposes for I subsequently hear distant sounds of unki says me good girl me dot to have two bikis biscuits there she goes now gazing rapturously at her own toes and murmuring piti two foot ten of conceit and vanity to say nothing of other wickednesses they're all alike I remember sitting in the garden one sunny afternoon in the suburbs of London suddenly I heard a shrill treble voice calling from a top story window to some unseen being presumably one of the other gardens gamma me good boy me very good boy gamma me dot on Bob's nikibokis why even animals are vain I saw a great Newfoundland dog the other day sitting in front of a mirror at the entrance to a shop in Regent's Circus and examining himself with an amount of smug satisfaction that I have never seen equaled elsewhere outside of vestry meeting I was at a farmhouse once when some high holiday was being celebrated I don't remember what the occasion was but it was something festive a mayday or quarter day or something of that sort and they put a garland of flowers round the head of one of the cows well that absurd quadruped went about all day as perky as a schoolgirl in a new frock and when they took the wreath off she became quite sulky and they had to put it on again before she would stand still to be milked this is not a Percy anecdote it is plain sober truth as for cats they nearly equal human beings for vanity I have known a cat get up and walk out of the room on a remark derogatory to her species being made by a visitor while a neatly turned compliment will set them purring for an hour I do like cats they are so unconsciously amusing there is such a comic dignity about them such a how dare you go away don't touch me sort of a heir now there is nothing haughty about a dog they are hail fellow well met with every Tom, Dick or Harry that they come across when I meet a dog of my acquaintance I slap his head call him a probrious epithets and roll him over on his back and there he lies gaping at me and doesn't mind it a bit fancy carrying on like that with a cat why she would never speak to you again as long as you lived no when you want to win the approbation of a cat you must mind what you are about and work your way carefully if you don't know the cat you'd best begin by saying poor pussy after which add diddhams in a tone of soothing sympathy you don't know what you mean any more than the cat does but the sentiment seems to imply a proper spirit on your part and generally touches her feelings to such an extent that if you are of good manners and passable appearance she will stick her back up and rub her nose against you matters having reached this stage you may venture to chuck her under the chin and tickle the side of her head and the intelligent creature will then stick her claws into your legs and all this friendship and affection are so sweetly expressed in the beautiful lines I love little pussy her coat is so warm and if I don't tease her she'll do me no harm so I'll stroke her and pat her and feed her with food and pussy will love me because I am good the last two lines of the stanza give us a pretty true insight into pussy's notions of human goodness it is evident that in her opinion goodness consists of stroking her and patting her and feeding her with food I fear this narrow-minded viewer virtue though is not confined to pussy's we are all inclined to adopt a similar standard of merit in our estimate of other people a good man is a man who is good to us and a bad man is a man who doesn't do what we want him to the truth is we each of us have an inborn conviction that the whole world with everybody and everything in it is created as a sort of necessary appendage to ourselves our fellow men and women were made to admire us and to minister to our various requirements you and I, dear reader, are each the centre of the universe in our respective opinions you, as I understand it were brought into being by a considerate providence in order that you might read and pay me for what I write while I, in your opinion, am an article sent into the world to write something for you to read the stars, as we term the myriad other worlds that are rushing down beside us through the eternal silence were put into the heavens to make the sky look interesting for us at night and the moon with its dark mysteries and ever-hidden face is an arrangement for us to flirt under I fear we are most of us like Mrs. Poiser's Bantam Cock who fancied the sun got up every morning to hear him crow it is vanity that makes the world go round I don't believe any man ever existed without vanity and if he did he would be an extremely uncomfortable person to have anything to do with he would, of course, be a very good man and we should respect him very much he would be a very admirable man a man to be put under a glass case and shown round as a specimen a man to be stuck upon a pedestal and copied like a school exercise a man to be reverenced but not a man to be loved not a human brother whose hand we should care to grip angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their way but we poor mortals in our present state will probably find them precious slow company even mere good people are rather depressing it is in our faults and failings not in our virtues that we touch one another and find sympathy we differ widely enough in our nobler qualities it is in our follies that we are at one some of us are pious some of us are generous some few of us are honest comparatively speaking and some fewer still may possibly be truthful but in vanity and kindred weaknesses we can all join hands vanity is one of those touches of nature that make the whole world kin from the Indian hunter proud of his belt of scalps to the European general swelling beneath his row of stars and medals from the Chinese gleeful at the length of his pigtail to the professional beauty suffering tortures in order that her waist may resemble a peg-top from draggletailed little poly-stiggins strutting through seven dials with a tattered parasol over her head to the princess sweeping through a drawing-room with a train of four yards long from Ari winning by vulgar chaff the loud laughter of his pals to the statesman whose ears are tickled by the cheers that greet his high-sounding periods from the dark-skinned African bartering his rare oils and ivory for a few glass beads to hang about his neck to the Christian maiden selling her white body for a score of tiny stones and an empty title to tack before her name all march and fight and bleed and die beneath its tawdry flag aye, aye, vanity is truly the motive power that moves humanity and it is flattery that greases the wheels if you want to win affection and respect in this world you must flatter people flatter high and low and rich and poor and silly and wise you will get on famously praise this man's virtues and that man's vices compliment everybody upon everything and especially upon what they haven't got admire guys for their beauty fools for their wit and boars for their breeding your discernment and intelligence will be extolled to the skies everyone can be got over by flattery the belted earl belted earl is the correct phrase I believe I don't know what it means unless it be an earl that wears a belt instead of braces some men do some men do I don't like it myself you have to keep the thing so tight for it to be of any use and that is uncomfortable anyhow, whatever particular kind of an earl a belted earl may be he is, I assert, get overable by flattery just as every other human being is from a duchess to a cat's meat man from a plough-boy to a poet far easier than the plough-boy for butter sinks better into wheat and bread than into oat and cakes as for love flattery is its very life-blood fill a person with love for themselves and what runs over will be your share says a certain witty and truthful Frenchman whose name I count for the life of me remember confound it I never can remember names when I want to tell a girl she is an angel only more angelic than an angel that she's a goddess only more graceful, queenly and heavenly than the average goddess that she's more fairy-like than Titania more beautiful than Venus more enchanting than Parthenopy more adorable, lovely and radiant in short than any other woman that ever did live, does live or could live and you will make a very favourable impression upon her trusting little heart sweet innocent she will believe every word you say it is so easy to deceive a woman in this way dear little souls they hate flattery so they tell you and when you say ah darling it isn't flattery in your case it isn't sober truth you really are without exaggeration the most beautiful, the most good the most charming, the most divine, the most perfect human creature that ever trod this earth they will smile a quiet approving smile and leaning against your manly shoulder murmur that you are a dear good fellow after all bye Jove fancy a man trying to make love on strictly truthful principles determining never to utter a word of mere compliment or hyperbole but to scrupulously confine himself to exact fact fancy his gazing rapturously into his mistress's eyes and whispering softly to her that she wasn't on the whole bad looking as girls went fancy his holding up her little hand and assuring her that it was of a light drab collar shot with red and telling her as he pressed her to his heart that her nose for a turned up one seemed rather pretty and that her eyes appeared to him as far as he could judge to be quite up to the average standard of such things a nice chance he would stand against the man who would tell her that her face was like a fresh blush rose that her hair was a wandering sunbeam imprisoned by her smiles and her eyes like two evening stars there are various ways of flattering and of course you must adapt your style to your subject some people like it laid on with a trowel and this requires very little art with sensible persons however it needs to be done very delicately and more by suggestion than actual words a good many like it wrapped up in the form of an insult as oh you're a perfect fool you are you would give your last sixpence to the first hungry looking beggar you met while others will swallow it only when administered through the medium of a third person so that if C wishes to get at an A of this sort he must confide to A's particular friend B that he thinks A a splendid fellow and beg him B not to mention it especially to A be careful that B is a reliable man though otherwise he won't those fine sturdy John Bowles who hate flattery sir never let anybody get over me by flattery etc etc are very simply managed flatter them enough upon their absence of vanity and you can do what you like with them after all vanity is as much a virtue as a vice it is easy to recite copy book maxims against its sinfulness but it is a passion that can move us to good as well as to evil ambition is only vanity and no bold we want to win praise and admiration or fame as we prefer to name it and so we write great books and paint grand pictures and sing sweet songs and toil with willing hands in study loom and laboratory we wish to become rich men not in order to enjoy ease and comfort all that any one man can taste of those may be purchased anywhere for £200 per annum but that our houses may be bigger and more gaudily furnished than our neighbours that our horses and servants may be more numerous that we may dress our wives and daughters in absurd but expensive clothes and that we may give costly dinners of which we ourselves individually do not eat a shillingsworth and to do this we aid the world's work with clear and busy brain spreading commerce among its peoples carrying civilisation to its remotest corners do not let us abuse vanity therefore rather let us use it honour itself is but the highest form of vanity the instinct is not confined solely to bow brummels and dolly vardons there is the vanity of the peacock and the vanity of the eagle snobs are vain but so too are heroes come oh my young brother books let us be vain together let us join hands and help each other to increase our vanity let us be vain not of our trousers and hair but of brave hearts and working hands of truth of purity of nobility let us be too vain to stoop to ought that is mean or base too vain for petty selfishness and little-minded envy too vain to say an unkind word or do an unkind act let us be vain of being single-hearted upright gentlemen in the midst of a world of knaves let us pride ourselves upon thinking high thoughts achieving great deeds living good lives End of section 5 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 Checkris London UK The Idol Thoughts of an Idol Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome Section 6 On Getting On in the World Not exactly the sort of thing for an Idol Fellow to think about is it? But outsiders, you know, often see most of the game and sitting in my arbor by the wayside smoking my hookah of contentment and eating the sweet lotus leaves of indolence I can look out musingly upon the whirling throng that rolls and tumbles past me on the great high road of life Never-ending is the wild procession Day and night you can hear the quick tramp of the myriad feet Some running, some walking, some halting and lame But all hastening, all eager in the feverish race All straining life and limb and heart and soul to reach the ever-receding horizon of success Mark them as they surge along Men and women Old and young Gentle and simple Fair and foul Rich and poor All hurrying, bustling, scrambling The strong pushing aside the weak The cunning creeping past the foolish Those behind elbowing those before Those in front kicking as they run at those behind Look close and see the flitting show Here is an old man panting for breath And there a timid maiden driven by a hard and sharp-faced matron Here is a studious youth reading how to get on in the world And letting everybody pass him as he stumbles along with his eyes on his book Here is a bored-looking man With a fashionably dressed woman jogging his elbow Here a boy gazing wistfully back at the sunny village that he never again will see Here, with a firm and easy step, strides a broad, shouldered man And here, with stealthy tread, a thin-faced, stooping fellow dodgers and shuffles upon his way Here, with gaze fixed always on the ground, an artful rogue carefully works his way from side to side of the road And thinks he is going forward And here a youth with a noble face stands Hesitating as he looks from the distant goal to the mud beneath his feet And now into sight comes a fair girl, with her dainty face growing more inkled at every step And now a care-worn man, and now a hopeful lad A motley throng, a motley throng Prince and beggar, sinner and saint Butcher and baker and candlestick-maker Tinkers and tailors and plough-boys and sailors All jostling along together Here the council in his wig and gown And here the old Jew clothes-man under his dingy tiara Here the soldier in his scarlet And here the undertaker's mute in streaming hat-band and worn cotton gloves Here the musty scholar fumbling his faded leaves And here the centred actor dangling his showy seals Here the glib politician crying his legislative panaceas And here the peripatetic cheap-jack holding aloft his quack cures for human ills Here the sleek capitalist, and there the sinewy labourer Here the man of science, and here the shoe-back Here the poet, and here the water-rate collector Here the cabinet-minister, and there the ballet dancer Here a red-nosed publican shouting the praises of his vats And there a temperance lecturer at fifty pounds a night Here a judge, and there a swindler Here a priest, and there a gambler Here a jeweled duchess smiling and gracious Here a thin lodging-housekeeper irritable with cooking And here a wobbling strutting thing, tawdry in paint and finery Cheek by cheek they struggle onward Screaming, cursing and praying Laughing, singing and moaning they rush past side by side Their speed never slackens, the race never ends There is no wayside rest for them No halt by cooling fountains No pause beneath green shades On, on, on On through the heat and the crowd and the dust On, or they will be trampled down and lost On with throbbing brain and tottering On, or they will be trampled down and lost On with throbbing brain and tottering limbs On, till the heart grows sick and the eyes grow blurred And a gurgling groan tells those behind they may close up another space And yet, in spite of the killing pace and the stony track Who but the sluggard or the dolt can hold aloof from the course Who, like the belated traveller that stands watching fairy revels till he snatches and drains The goblin cup and springs into the whirling circle Can view the mad tumult and not be drawn into its midst Not I, for one I confess to the wayside arbor, the pipe of contentment And the lotus leaves being altogether unsuitable metaphors They sounded very nice and philosophical But I'm afraid I'm not the sort of person to sit in arbor's smoking pipes When there is any fun going on outside I think I more resemble the Irishman Who, seeing a crowd collecting, sent his little girl out to ask if there was going to be a row It costs, if so, farther would like to be in it I love the fierce strife I like to watch it I like to hear of people getting on in it Battling their way bravely and fairly Not slipping through by luck or trickery It stirs one's old Saxon fighting blood Like the tales of knights who fought against fearful odds That thrilled us in our schoolboy days And fighting the battle of life is fighting against fearful odds too There are giants and dragons in this nineteenth century And the golden casket that they guard is not so easy to win As it appears in the story books There Algernon takes one long last look at the ancestral hall Dashers the teardrop from his eye and goes off To return in three years' time rolling in riches The authors do not tell us how it's done Which is a pity, for it would surely prove exciting But then not one novelist in a thousand ever does tell us the real story of their hero They linger for a dozen pages over a tea-party But some upper life's history with He had become one of our merchant-princes Or he was now a great artist with the world at his feet Why, there is more real life in one of Gilbert's patasongs Than in half the biographical novels ever written He relates to us all the various steps by which his office boy rose to be the ruler of the queen's navy and explains to us how the briefless barrister managed to become a great and good judge Ready to try this breach of promise of marriage It is in the petty details, not in the great results, that the interest of existence lies What we really want is a novel showing us all the hidden undercurrent of an ambitious man's career His struggles and failures and hopes, his disappointments and victories It will be an immense success I am sure the wooing of Fortune would prove quite as interesting a tale as the wooing of any flesh and blood maiden Though, by the way, it would read extremely similar For Fortune is indeed, as the ancients painted her, very like a woman Not quite so unreasonable and inconsistent, but nearly so And the pursuit is much the same in one case as in the other Ben Johnson's couplet, Court amistress, she denies you Let her alone, she will court you Puts them both in a nutshell A woman never thoroughly cares for her lover until he has ceased to care for her And it is not until you have snapped your fingers in Fortune's face And turned on your heel that she begins to smile upon you But by that time you do not much care whether she smiles or frowns Why could she not have smiled when her smiles would have filled you with ecstasy? Everything comes too late in this world Good people say that it is quite right and proper that it should be so And that it proves ambition is wicked Bosch Good people are altogether wrong They always are, in my opinion We never agree on any single point What would the world do without ambitious people I should like to know? Why, it would be as flabby as a Norfolk dumpling Ambitious people are the leaven which raises it into wholesome bread Without ambitious people the world would never get up They are busy-bodies who are about early in the morning Hammering, shouting and rattling the fire-ions And rendering it generally impossible for the rest of the house to remain in bed Wrong to be ambitious for sooth The men wrong who with bent back and sweating brow cut the smooth road Over which humanity marches forward from generation to generation Men wrong for using the talents that their master has entrusted to them For toiling while others play Of course they are seeking their reward Man is not given that god-like unselfishness that thinks only of others good But in working for themselves they are working for us all We are so bound together that no man can labour for himself alone Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mould the universe The stream in struggling onward turns the mill wheel The coral insect fashioning its tiny cell joins continents to one another And the ambitious man building a pedestal for himself leaves a monument to posterity Alexander and Caesar fought for their own ends But in doing so they put a belt of civilisation half round the earth Stevenson, to win a fortune, invented the steam engine And Shakespeare wrote his plays in order to keep a comfortable home for Mrs Shakespeare And the little Shakespeare's Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against And they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience For the active spirits of the age to play before I have not a word to say against contented people so long as they keep quiet But do not, for goodness sake, let them go strutting about as they are so fond of doing Crying out that they are the true models for the whole world Crying out that they are the true models for the whole species Why, they are the deadheads, the drones in the great hive The street crowds that lounge about, gaping at those who are working And let them not imagine either, as they are also fond of doing That they are very wise and philosophical And that it is a very artful thing to be contented It may be true that a contented mind is happy anywhere But so is a Jerusalem pony And the consequences that both are put anywhere and are treated anyhow Oh, you need not bother about him, is what he said He's very contented as he is and it would be a pity to disturb him And so your contented party is passed over and the discontented man gets his place If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest And if you can do with a little, ask for a great deal Because if you don't, you won't get any In this world it is necessary to adopt the principle pursued by the plaintiff in an action for damages And to demand ten times more than you are ready to accept If you can feel satisfied with a hundred, begin by insisting on a thousand If you start by suggesting a hundred, you will only get ten It was by not following this simple plan that poor Jean-Jacques Rousseau came to such grief He fixed the summit of his earthly bliss at living in an orchard with an amiable woman and a cow And he never attained even that He did get as far as the orchard, but the woman was not amiable And she brought her mother with her and there was no cow Now, if he had made up his mind for a large country estate, a house full of angels and a cattle show He might have lived to possess his kitchen garden and one head of livestock And even possibly have come across that rarer avis, a really amiable woman What a terribly dull affair too life must be for contented people How heavy the time must hang upon their hands And what on earth do they occupy their thoughts with, supposing that they have any Reading the paper and smoking seems to be the intellectual food of the majority of them To which the more energetic add playing the flute and talking about the affairs of the next door neighbour They never knew the excitement of expectation nor the stern delight of accomplished effort Such as stir the pulse of the man who has objects and hopes and plans To the ambitious man life is a brilliant game A game that calls forth all his tact and energy and nerve A game to be won in the long run by the quick eye and the steady hand And yet having sufficient chance about its working out to give it all the glorious zest of uncertainty He exalts in it as the strong swimmer in the heaving billows As the athlete in the wrestle, the soldier in the battle And if he be defeated he wins the grim joy of fighting If he lose the race he at least has had a run Better to work and fail than to sleep one's life away So walk up, walk up, walk up Walk up ladies and gentlemen, walk up boys and girls Show your skill and try your strength Brave your luck and prove your pluck Walk up The show is never closed and the game is always going The only genuine sport in all the fair Gentlemen, highly respectable and strictly moral Patronized by the nobility, clergy and gentry Established in the year one, gentlemen And has been flourishing ever since Walk up Walk up ladies and gentlemen and take a hand There are prizes for all and all can play There is gold for the man and fame for the boy Rank for the maiden and pleasure for the fool So walk up, ladies and gentlemen, walk up All prizes and no blanks for some few win And as to the rest, why The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain End of section six Thank you for watching