 Chapter 1 of The Second Thoughts of an Idol Fellow 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 The Second Thoughts of an Idol Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome Chapter 1 On the Art of Making Up One's Mind Now which would you advise, dear? You see, with the red, I shan't be able to wear my magenta hat. Well then, why not have the grey? Yes, yes, I think the grey will be more useful. It's a good material. Yes, and it's a pretty grey. You know what I mean, dear? Not a common grey. Of course grey is always an uninteresting colour. It's quiet. And then again, what I feel about the red is that it is so warm looking. Red makes you feel warm, even when you're not warm. You know what I mean, dear? Well then, why not have the red? It suits you, red. No. Do you really think so? Well, when you've got a colour, I mean, of course. Yes, that is the drawback to red. No, I think on the whole, the grey is safer. Then you will take the grey, madam? Yes, I think I'd better, don't you, dear? I like it myself very much. And it is good wearing stuff. I shall have it trimmed with... Oh! You haven't cut it off, have you? It was just about, madam. Well, don't for a moment. Just let me have another look at the red. You see, dear, it has just occurred to me that chinchilla would look so well on the red. So it would, dear. And you see, I've got the chinchilla. Then have the red. Why not? Well, there is the hat I'm thinking of. You haven't anything else you could wear with that? Nothing at all. And it would go so beautifully with the grey? Yes, I think I'll have the grey. It's always a safe colour, grey. Fourteen yards, I think you said, madam? Yes, fourteen yards will be enough, because I shall mix it with... One minute. You see, dear, if I take the grey, I shall have nothing to wear with my black jacket. Wont it go with grey? Not well. Not so well as the red. I should have the red, then. You evidently fancy it yourself. No. Personally, I prefer the grey. But then one must think of everything and... Good gracious! That's surely not the right time. No, madam. It's ten minutes slow. We always keep our clocks a little slow. And we were to have been at Madam Janaways at a quarter past twelve. How long shopping does take, I... Why? Whatever time did we start? About eleven, wasn't it? Half past ten, I remember now, because you know, we said we'd start at half past nine. We've been two hours already. And we don't seem to have done much, do we? Done literally nothing. And I meant to have done so much. I must go to Madam Janaways. Have you got my purse, dear? Oh, it's all right, I've got it. Well, now you haven't decided whether you're going to have the grey or the red. I'm sure I don't know what I do want now. I made up my mind a minute ago, and now it's all gone again. Oh yes, I remember. The red. Yes, I'll have the red. No, I don't mean the red. I mean the grey. You were talking about the red last time, if you remember, dear. Oh, so I was. You're quite right. That's the worst of shopping. Do you know I get quite confused sometimes? Then you will decide on the red, madam? Yes. I shan't do any better, shall I, dear? What do you think? You haven't got any other shades of red, have you? This is such an ugly red. The shopman reminds her that she has seen all the other reds, and that this is the particular shade she selected and admired. Oh, very well, she replies, with the air of one from whom all earthly cares are falling. I must take that then, I suppose. I can't be worried about it any longer. I've wasted half the morning already. Outside she recollects three insuperable objections to the red, and four unanswerable arguments why she should have selected the grey. She wonders would they change it if she went back and asked to see the shopwalker. Her friend, who wants her lunch, thinks not. That is what I hate about shopping, she says. One never has time to really think. She says she shan't go to that shop again. We laugh at her, but are we so very much better? Come, my superior male friend, have you never stood amid your wardrobe undecided whether in her eyes you would appear more imposing clad in the rough tweed suit that so admirably displays your broad shoulders? Or in the orthodox black frock that after all is perhaps more suitable to the figure of a man approaching, let us say, the nine and twenties? Or better still, why not riding costume? Did we not hear her say how well Jones looked in his top boots and britches and hang it all, we have a better leg than Jones? What a pity riding britches are made so baggy nowadays. Why is it that male fashions tend more and more to hide the male leg? As women have become less and less ashamed of theirs, we have become more and more reticent of ours. Why are the silken hoes, the tight-fitting pantaloons, the neat knee-britches of our forefathers, impossible to-day? Are we grown more modest? Or has there come about a falling off, rendering concealment advisable? I can never understand myself why women lovers. They must be our honest worth, our sterling merit that attracts them. Certainly not our appearance in a pair of tweed-dittos, a black angora coat and vest stand up collar and chimney-pot hat. No, it must be our sheer force of character that compels their admiration. What a good time our ancestors must have had was born in upon me when, on one occasion, I appeared in character at a fancy dress ball. What I represented I am unable to say, and I don't particularly care. I only know that it was something military. I also remember that the costume was two sizes too small for me in the chest, and thereabouts, and three sizes too large for me in the hat. I padded the hat and dined in the middle of the day of a chop and half a glass of soda water. I have gained prizes as a boy for mathematics, also for scripture history, not often, but I have done it. A literary critic, now dead, once praised a book of mine. I know there have been occasions when my conduct has won the approbation of good men, but never, never in my whole life have I felt more proud, more satisfied with myself than on that evening, when the last hook fastened, I gazed at my full-length self in the cheval glass. I was a dream. I say it, who should not, but I am not the only one who said it. I was a glittering dream. The groundwork was red, trimmed with gold braid wherever there was room for gold braid, and where there was no more possible room for gold braid, there hung gold cords and tassels and straps. Gold buttons and buckles fastened me. Gold embroidered belts and sashes caressed me. White horsehair plumes waved o me. I am not sure that everything was in its proper place, but I managed to get everything on somehow, and I looked well. It suited me. My success was a revelation to me of female human nature. Girls who had hitherto been cold and distant gathered round me, timidly solicitous of notice. Girls on whom I smiled lost their heads and gave themselves airs. Girls who were not introduced to me sulked and were rude to girls that had been. For one poor child, with whom I sat out two dancers, at least she sat while I stood gracefully beside her, I had been advised by the costumier not to sit. I was sorry. He was a worthy young fellow, the son of a cottonbroker, and he would have made her a good husband, I feel sure, but he was foolish to come as a beer bottle. Perhaps after all it is as well those old fashions have gone out. A week in that suit might have impaired my natural modesty. One wonders that fancy dress balls are not more popular in this grey age of ours. The childish instinct to dress up, to make believe, is with us all. We grow so tired of being always ourselves. A tea-table discussion at which I once assisted fell into this Would any one of us, when it came to the point, change with anybody else? The poor man with the millionaire. The governess with the princess. Change not only outward circumstances and surroundings, but health and temperament. Heart, brain and soul. So that not one mental or physical particle of one's original self one would retain save only memory. The general opinion was that we would not, but one lady maintained the affirmative. Oh no, you wouldn't really, dear, argue to friend. You think you would. Yes, I would, persisted the first lady. I am tired of myself. I'd even be you for a change. In my youth the question chiefly important to me was, what sort of man shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks one self this question. At thirty-nine we say, I wish fate hadn't made me this sort of man. In those days I was a reader of much well-meant advice to young men. And I gathered that whether I should become a solansolot, a hair-toiffles-droch or an ayago was a matter for my own individual choice. Whether I should go through life gaily or gravely was a question the pros and cons of which I carefully considered. For patterns I turned to books. Byron was then still popular, and many of us made up our minds to be gloomy, satinine young men, weary with the world and prone to soliloquy. I determined to join them. For a month I rarely smiled, or when I did it was with a weary, bitter smile, concealing a broken heart, at least that was the intention. Shallow-minded observers misunderstood. I know exactly how it feels, they would say, looking at me sympathetically. I often have it myself. It's the sudden change in the weather, I think. And they would press neat brandy upon me and suggest ginger. Again it is distressing to the young man, busy burying his secret sorrow under a mound of silence, to be slapped on the back by commonplace people and asked, Well, how's the hump this morning, and to hear his mood of dignified melancholy referred to by those who should know better, as the sulks. There are practical difficulties also in the way of him who would play the Byronic young gentleman. He must be supernaturally wicked, or rather must have been. Only, alas, in the unliterary grammar of life, where the future tense stands first, and the past is formed not from the indefinite, but from the present indicative, to have been is to be. And to be wicked on a small income is impossible. The ruin of even the simplest of maidens costs money. In the courts of love one cannot sue in former porporis, nor would it be the Byronic method. To drown remembrance in the cup sounds well, but then the cup, to be fitting, should be of some expensive brand. To drink deep of old toque or asti is poetical, but when one's purse necessitates that the draught, if it is to be deep enough to drown anything, should be of thin beer at five and nine, the four and a half gallon casque, or something similar in price, sin is robbed of its flavour. Possibly also, let me think it, the conviction may have been within me that vice, even at its daintiest, is but an ugly, sordid thing, repulsive in the sunlight. That though, as rags and dirt to art, it may afford picturesque material to literature, it is an evil smelling garment to the wearer, one that a good man, by reason of poverty of will, may come down to, but want to be avoided with all one's effort, discarded with returning mental prosperity. Be this as it may, I grew weary of training for a satinine young man, and in the midst of my doubt, I chanced upon a book the hero of which was a debonair young book, own cousin to Tom and Jerry. He attended fights, both of cocks and men, flirted with actresses, wrenched off door-knockers, extinguished street-lamps, played many a merry jest upon many an unappreciative night-watchman, for all the which he was much beloved by the women of the book. Why should not I flirt with actresses? Put out street-lamps, play pranks on policemen, and be beloved. London life was changed since the days of my hero, but much remained, and the heart of woman is eternal. If no longer prize-fighting was to be had, at least there were boxing competitions, so-called, in dingy back parlours out Whitechapel Way. Though cock-fighting was a lost sport, were there not damp cellars near the river, but upence a gentleman might back mongrel terriers to kill rats against time, and feel himself indeed a sportsman. True, the atmosphere of reckless gaiety, always surrounding my hero, I missed myself from these scenes, finding in its place an atmosphere more suggestive of gin, stale tobacco, and nervous apprehension of the police. But the essentials must have been the same, and the next morning I could exclaim in the very words of my prototype, odd crickets, but I feel as though the devil himself were in my head, peste take me for a fool. But in this direction likewise my fatal lack of means opposed me. It affords much food to the philosophic mind, this influence of income upon character. Even fifth-rate boxing competitions, organised by friendly leads, and ratting contests in rather high slums have become expensive, when you happen to be the only gentleman present possessed of a collar, and are expected to do the honours of your class in dog's nose. True, climbing lampposts and putting out the gas is fairly cheap, providing always you are not caught in the act, but as a recreation it lacks variety. Nor is the modern London lamppost adapted to sport. Anything more difficult to grip, anything with less give in it, I have rarely clasped. The disgraceful amount of dirt allowed to accumulate upon it is another drawback from the climber's point of view. By the time you have swarmed up your third post, a positive distaste for gaiety steals over you. Your desire is towards Arnica and a bath. Nor in jokes at the expense of policemen is the fun entirely on your side. Maybe I did not proceed with judgement. It occurs to me now looking back that the neighbourhoods of Covent Garden and Great Marlborough Street were ill-chosen for sport of this nature. To bonnet a fat policeman is excellent fooling. While he is struggling with his helmet you can ask him comic questions and by the time he has got his head free you are out of sight. But the game should be played in a district where there is not an average of three constables to every dozen square yards. When two other policemen who have had their eye on you for the past ten minutes are watching the proceedings from just round the next corner you have little or no leisure for due enjoyment of the situation. By the time you have run the whole length of Great Titchfield Street and twice round Oxford Market you are of opinion that a joke will never be prolonged beyond the point at which there is danger of its becoming wirisham and that the time has now arrived for home and friends. The law, on the other hand, now raised by reinforcements to a strength of six or seven men is just beginning to enjoy the chase. You picture to yourself while doing Hanover Square the scene in court the next morning. You will be accused of being drunk and disorderly. It will be idle for you to explain to the magistrate or to your relations afterwards that you were only trying to live up to a man who did this sort of thing in a book and was admired for it. You will be fined the usual forty shillings and on the next occasion of your calling at the Mayfields the girls will be out. A Mrs Mayfield, an excellent lady who has always taken a motherly interest in you will talk seriously to you and urge you to sign the pledge. Thanks to your youth and constitution you shake off the pursuit at Notting Hill and to avoid any chance of unpleasant contour on the return journey walk home to Bloomsbury by way of Camden Town and Islington. I abandoned sportive tendencies as the result of a vow made by myself to Providence during the early hours of a certain Sunday morning while clinging to the waterspout of an unpretentious house situate in a side street off Soho. I put it to Providence as man to man. Let me only get out of this I think were the muttered words I used and no more sport for me. Providence closed on the offer and did let me get out of it. True it was a complicated get out involving a broken skylight and three gas globes two hours in a coal cellar and a sovereign to a potman for the loan of an Ulster and when at last secure in my chamber I took stock of myself what was left of me I could not but reflect that Providence might have done the job neater yet I experienced no desire to escape the terms of the Covenant my inclining for the future was towards a life of simplicity. Accordingly, I cast about for a new character and found one to suit me. The German professor was becoming popular as a hero about this period he wore his hair long and was otherwise untidy but he had a heart of steel occasionally of gold. The majority of folks in the book judging him from his exterior together with his conversation him broken English dealing chiefly with his dead mother and his little sister Lisa dubbed him uninteresting but then they did not know about the heart his chief possession was a lame dog which he had rescued from a brutal mob and when he was not talking broken English he was nursing this dog but his speciality was stopping runaway horses thereby saving the heroine's life this combined with the broken English and the dog rendered him irresistible he seemed a peaceful amiable sort of creature and I decided to try him I could not of course be a German professor but I could and did wear my hair long in spite of much public advice to the contrary voiced chiefly by small boys I endeavoured to obtain possession of a lame dog but failed a one-eyed dealer in seven dials to whom as a last resource I applied offered to lame one for me for an extra five shillings but this suggestion I declined I came across an uncanny looking mongrel late one night he was not lame but he seemed pretty sick and feeling I was not robbing anybody of anything very valuable I lured him home and nursed him I fancy I must have over nursed him he got so healthy in the end there was no doing anything with him he was an ill-conditioned cur and he was too old to be taught he became the curse of the neighbourhood his idea of sport was killing chickens and sneaking rabbits from outside polterous shops for recreation he killed cats and frightened small children by yalping round their legs there were times when I could have blamed him myself if only I could have got hold of him I made nothing by running that dog nothing whatever people instead of admiring me for nursing him back to life called me a fool and said that if I didn't drown the broo he spoiled my character utterly I mean my character at this period it is difficult to pose as a young man with a heart of gold when discovered in the middle of the road throwing stones at your own dog and stones were the only things that would reach and influence him I was also hampered by a scarcity in runaway horses the horse of our suburb was not that type of horse once and only once did an opportunity offer itself a practice it was a good opportunity in as much as he was not running away very greatly indeed I doubt if he knew himself that he was running away it transpired afterwards that it was a habit of his waiting for his driver outside the Rosencrown for what he considered to be a reasonable period to trot home on his own account he passed me going about seven miles an hour with the rains dragging conveniently beside him he was the very thing for a beginner and I prepared myself at the critical moment however a couple of the vicious policeman pushed me aside and did it themselves there was nothing for me to regret as the matter turned out I should only have rescued a bald-headed commercial traveller very drunk who swore horribly and pelted the crowd with empty collar boxes from the window of a very high flat I once watched three men resolve to stop a runaway horse each man marched deliberately into the middle of the road and took up his stand my window was too far away for me to see their faces but their attitude suggested that the heroism onto death the first man as the horse came charging towards him faced it with his arms spread out he never flinched until the horse was within about twenty yards of him then as the animal was evidently determined to continue its wild career there was nothing left for him to do but to retire again to the curb where he stood looking after it with evident sorrow as though saying to himself oh well if you're going to be headstrong I've done with you the second man on the catastrophe being thus left clear for him without a moment's hesitation or walked up a by-street and disappeared the third man stood his ground and as the horse passed him yelled at it I could not hear what he said I have not the slightest doubt it was excellent advice but the animal was apparently too excited even to listen the first and the third man went afterwards and discussed the matter sympathetically I judged they were regretting the pig-headedness of runaway horses in general and hoping that nobody had been hurt I forget the other characters I assumed about this period one I know that got me into a great deal of trouble was that of a downright honest hearty outspoken young man who always said what he meant I never knew but one man who made a real success of speaking his mind I have heard him slap the table with his open hand and exclaim you want me to flatter you to stuff you up with a pack of lies that's not me that's not Jim Compton but if you care for my honest opinion all I can say is that child is the most marvelous performer on the piano I've ever heard I don't say she is a genius but I have heard Liszt and Metzler and all the crackpot players and I prefer her that's my opinion I speak my mind and I can't help it if you're offended how refreshing the parents would say to come across a man who is not afraid to say what he really thinks why are we not all outspoken the last character I attempted I thought would be easy to assume it was that of a much-admired and beloved young man who's great charm lay in the fact that he's not afraid who's great charm lay in the fact that he was always just himself other people posed and acted he never made any effort to be anything but his own natural simple self I thought I also would be my own natural simple self but then the question arose what was my own natural simple self that was the preliminary problem I have not solved it to this day what am I I am a great gentleman walking through the world with dauntless heart and head erect scornful of all meanness impatient of all littleness I am a mean thinking little daring man the type of man that I of the dauntless heart and the erect head despise greatly crawling to a poor end by devious ways cringing to the strong of all pain I but dear reader I will not sadden your sensitive ears with details I could give you showing how contemptible a creature this wretched I happens to be nor would you understand me you would only be astonished discovering that such disreputable specimens of humanity contrive to exist in this age it is best my dear sir or madam you should remain ignorant of these evil persons let me not trouble you with knowledge I am a philosopher greeting alike the thunder and the sunshine with frolic welcome only now and then when all things do not fall exactly as I wish them when foolish wicked people will persist in doing foolish wicked acts affecting my comfort and happiness I rage and fret a goodish deal as Heiner said of himself I am knight too of the holy grail valiant for the truth reverent of all women honouring all men eager to yield life to the service of my great captain and next moment I find myself in the enemy's lines fighting under the black banner it must be confusing to these opposing generals all their soldiers being deserters from both armies what are women but men's playthings shall there be no more cakes and ale for me because thou art virtuous what are men but hungry dogs contending each against each for a limited supply of bones do others less thou be done what is the truth but an unexploded lie I am a lover of all living things you my poor sister struggling with your heavy burden on your lonely way I would kiss the tears from your worn cheeks lighten with my love the darkness around your feet you my patient brother breathing hard as round and round you tramp the trodden path like some poor half blind gin horse stripes your only encouragement scanty store of dry chaff in your manger I would jog beside you taking the strain a little from your aching shoulders and we would walk nodding our heads side by side and you, remembering should tell me of the fields where long ago you played of the gallant races that you ran and won and you, little pinched brats with wondering eyes looking from dirt encrusted faces I would take you in my arms and tell you fairy stories into the sweet land of make believe we would wonder leaving the sad old world behind us for a time and you should be princes and princesses and no love but again a selfish greedy man comes often and sits in my clothes a man who frets away his life planning how to get more money more food more clothes more pleasures for himself a man so busy thinking of the many things he needs he has no time to dwell upon the needs of others he deems himself the centre of the universe you would imagine hearing him grumbling that the world had been created and got ready against the time when he should come to take his pleasure in it he would push and trample heedless reaching towards these many desires of his and when grabbing he misses a man for its injustice and men and women for getting in his path he is not a nice man in any way I wish as I say he would not come so often and sit in my clothes he persists that he is I and that I am only a sentimental fool spoiling his chances sometimes for a while I get rid of him but he always comes back and then he gets rid of me and I become him it is very confusing sometimes I wonder if I really am myself end of chapter 1 chapter 2 of the second thoughts of an idol fellow this Librivox recording is in the public domain recording by Czech Chris the second thoughts of an idol fellow by Jerome K. Jerome chapter 2 of not getting what one wants long, long ago when you and I, dear reader, were young when the fairies dwelt in the hearts of the roses when the moonbeams bent each night beneath the weight of angels feet there lived a good wise man or rather I should say there had lived for at the time of which I speak the poor old gentleman lay dying waiting each moment the dread summons he fell amusing on the life that stretched far back behind him how full it seemed to him at that moment of follies and mistakes bringing bitter tears not to himself alone but to others also how much brighter a road might it have been had he been wiser had he known ha me said the good old gentleman if only I could live my life again in the light of experience now as he spoke these words he felt the drawing near to him of a presence and thinking it was the one whom he expected raising himself a little from his bed he feebly cried I am ready but a hand forced him gently back a voice saying not yet I bring life not death your wish shall be granted you shall live your life again and the knowledge of the past shall be with you to guide you see you use it I will come again then a sleep fell upon the good man and when he awoke he was again a little child lying in his mother's arms but locked within his brain was the knowledge of the life that he had lived already so once more he lived loved and laboured so a second time he lay an old worn man with life behind him and the angel stood again beside his bed and the voice said well are you content now I am well content said the old gentleman let death come and have you understood asked the angel I think so was the answer that experiences but as of the memory of the pathways he has trod to a traveller journeying ever onward into an unknown land I have been wise only to reap the reward of folly knowledge has often times kept me from my good I have avoided my old mistakes only to fall into others that I knew not of I have reached the old errors by new roads where I have escaped sorrow I have lost joy where I have grasped happiness I have plucked pain also now let me go with death that I may learn which was so like the angel of that period the giving of a gift bringing to a man only more trouble maybe I am overrating my coolness of judgement under somewhat startling circumstances but I am inclined to think that had I lived in those days and had a ferry or an angel to me wanting to give me something my soul's desire or the sum of my ambition or any trifle of that kind I should have been short with him you pack up that precious bag of tricks of yours I should have said to him it would have been rude but that is how I should have felt and get outside with it I am not taking anything in your line today I don't require any supernatural aid to get me into trouble all the worry I want I can get down here so it's no good you're calling you take that little joke of yours I don't know what it is but I know enough not to want to know and run it off on some other idiot I'm not priggish I have no objection to an innocent game of catch questions in the ordinary way and when I get to turn myself but if I've got to pay every time and the stakes are to be my earthly happiness plus my future existence why I don't play there was the case of Midas a nice shabby trick you fellas played off upon him making pretence you did not understand him twisting round the poor old fellows words just for all the world as though you were a pack of old Bailey lawyers trying to trip up a witness I'm ashamed of the lot of you and I tell you so coming down here fooling poor unsuspecting mortals with your nonsense as though we had not enough to harriers as it was then there was that other case of the poor old peasant couple to whom you promised three wishes the whole thing ending in a black pudding and they never got even that you thought that funny I suppose that was your fairy humour a pity I say you have not all of you something better to do with your time as I said before you take that celestial Joe Miller of yours and work it off on somebody else I've read my fairy law and I've read my mythology and I don't want any of your blessings and what's more I'm not going to have them when I want blessings I will put up with the usual sort we are accustomed to down here you know the ones I mean the disguised brand the blessings that no human being would think were blessings if you were not told the blessings that don't look like blessings that don't feel like blessings that as a matter of fact are not blessings practically speaking the blessings that other people think are blessings for us and that we don't they've got their drawbacks but they are better than yours at any rate and they are sooner over I don't want your blessings at any price if you leave one here I shall simply throw it out after you I feel confident I should have answered in that strain and I feel it would have done good somebody ought to have spoken plainly because with fairies and angels of that sort fooling about no one was ever safe for a moment children could hardly have been allowed outside the door one never could have told what silly trick some would be funny fairy might be waiting to play off on them the poor child would not know and would think it was getting something worth having the wonder to me is that some of those angels didn't get tarred and feathered I am doubtful whether even Cinderella's look was quite as satisfying as we are led to believe after the carpetless kitchen and the black beetles how beautiful the palace must have seemed for the first year perhaps for the first two and the prince how loving, how gallant how tender for the first year perhaps for the first two and after you see he was a prince brought up in a court the atmosphere of which is not conducive to the development of the domestic virtues and she was Cinderella and then the marriage altogether was rather a hurried affair oh yes she's a good loving little woman but perhaps our royal highness ship did act too much on the impulse of the moment it was her dear dainty feet that danced their way into our heart how they flashed and twinkled eased in those fairy slippers how like a lily among tulips she moved that night amid the over-gorgeous court dames she was so sweet so fresh so different to all the others whom we knew so well how happy she looked as she put her trembling little hand in ours what possibilities might lie behind those drooping lashes and we were in amorous mood that night the music in our feet the flash and glitter in our eyes and then to peak us further she disappeared as suddenly and strangely as she had come who was she whence came she what was the mystery surrounding her was she only a delicious dream a haunting fantasy that we should never look upon again never clasp again within our longing arms was our heart to be forever hungry haunted by the memory of no by heavens she is real and a woman here is her dear slipper made surely to be kissed of a size too that a man may well wear within the breast of his doublet had any woman, nay, fairy, angel such dear feet search the whole kingdom through but find her find her the gods have heard our prayers and given us this clue suppose she be not all she seemed suppose she be not of birth fit to mate with our noble house out upon thee for an earthbound blind curmudgeon of a Lord High Chancellor how could a woman whom such slipper fitted be but of the noblest and the best as far above us mere prinslet that we are as the stars in heaven are brighter than thy dull old eyes go, search the kingdom we tell thee from east to west from north to south and see to it that thou findest her or it shall go hard with thee by Venus be she a swineherd's daughter she shall be our queen and she dain to accept of us and of our kingdom ah, well, of course it was not a wise piece of business that goes without saying but we were young and princes are only human poor child she could not help her education or rather her lack of it dear little thing the wonder is that she has contrived to be no more ignorant than she is dragged up as she was neglected and overworked nor does life in a kitchen amid the companionship of peasants and menials tend to foster the intellect who can blame her for being shy and somewhat dull of thought not we generous-minded, kind-hearted prince that we are and she is very affectionate the family are trying certainly father-in-law not a bad sort a little prosy went upon the subject of his domestic troubles and a little too fond of his glass mama in law and those two ugly ill-managed sisters decidedly a nuisance about the palace yet what can we do they are our relations now and they do not forget to let us know it well, well, we had to expect that and things might have been worse anyhow she is not jealous thank goodness so the day comes when poor little Cinderella sits alone of a night in the beautiful palace the courtyards have gone home in their carriages the Lord High Chancellor has bowed himself out backwards the gold stick in waiting and the grooms of the chamber have gone to their beds the maids of honour have said good night and drifted out of the door laughing and whispering among themselves the clock strikes twelve one two and still no footstep creaks upon the stair once it followed swiftly upon the good night of the maids who did not laugh or whisper then at last the door opens and the prince enters none too pleased at finding Cinderella still awake so sorry I'm late my love detained on affairs of state foreign policy very complicated dear have only just this moment left the council chamber and little Cinderella while the prince sleeps lies sobbing out her poor sad heart into the beautiful royal pillow embroidered with the royal arms and edged with the royal monogram in lace why did he ever marry me I should have been happier in the old kitchen the black beetles did frighten me a little but there was always the dear old cat and sometimes when mother and the girls were out papa would call softly down the kitchen stairs for me to come up and we would have such a merry evening together and sup off sausages dear old dad I hardly ever see him now and then when my work was done how pleasant it was to sit in front of the fire and dream of the wonderful things that would come to me some day I was always going to be a princess even in my dreams and live in a palace but it was so different to this oh how I hate it this beastly palace where everybody sneers at me I know they do though they bow and scrape and pretend to be so polite and I'm not clever and smart as they are I hate them I hate these bold faced women who are always here that's the worst of a palace everybody can come in oh I hate everybody and everything oh god mama come and take me away take me back to my old kitchen give me back my old poor frock let me dance again with the fire tongs for a partner and be happy dreaming poor little Cinderella perhaps it would have been better had god mama been less ambitious for you dear had you married some good honest yeoman who would never have known that you were not brilliant who would have loved you because you were just amiable and pretty had your kingdom been only a farmhouse where your knowledge of domestic economy gained so hardly would have been useful where you would have shone instead of being overshadowed where papa would have dropped in to smoke his pipe and escape from his domestic wrangles where you would have been real queen but then you know dear you would not have been content ah yes with your present experience now you know that queens as well as little drudges have their troubles but without that experience you would have looked in the glass when you were alone you would have looked at your shapely hands and feet and the shadows would have crossed your pretty face yes you would have said to yourself John is a dear kind fellow and I love him very much and all that and the old dreams dreamt in the old low-ceiling kitchen before the dying fire would have come back to you and you would have been discontented then as now only in a different way oh yes you would Cinderella though you gravely shake your gold crowned head and let me tell you why it is because you are a woman and the fate of all us men and women alike is to be forever wanting what we have not and to be finding when we have it that it is not what we wanted that is the law of life dear do you think as you lie upon the floor with your head upon your arms the only woman whose tears are soaking into the hearthrug at that moment my dear princess if you could creep unseen about your city peeping at will through the curtain shielded windows you would come to think that all the world was little else than a big nursery full of crying children with none to comfort them the doll is broken no longer it's sweetly squeaks in answer to our pressure I love you, kiss me the drum lies silent with the drumstick inside no longer do we make a brave noise in the nursery the box of tea things we have clumsily put our foot upon there will be no more merry parties around the three-legged stool the tin trumpet will not play the note we want to sound the wooden bricks keep falling down the toy cannon has exploded and burnt our fingers never mind little man, little woman we will try and mend things tomorrow and after all, Cinderella dear you do live in a fine palace and you have jewels and grand dressers and no, no do not be indignant with me did you not dream of these things as well as of love come now, be honest it was always a prince was it not or at the least an exceedingly well-to-do party that handsome young gentleman who bowed to you so gallantly from the red embers he was never a virtuous young commercial traveller or cultured Clarke earning a salary of £3 a week was he Cinderella yet there are many charming commercial travellers many delightful Clarke's with limited incomes quite sufficient however to a sensible man and woman desiring but each other's love why was it always a prince Cinderella had the palace and the liverage servants and the carriages and the horses and the jewels and the dressers nothing to do with the dream no Cinderella you were human that is all the artist shivering in his conventional attic dreaming of fame do you think he is not hoping she will come to his loving arms in the form Jove came to Dane do you think he is not reckoning also upon the good dinners and the big cigars the fur coat and the diamond studs that her visits will enable him to purchase there is a certain picture very popular just now you may see it Cinderella in many of the shop windows of the town it is called the dream of love and it represents a beautiful young girl sleeping in a very beautiful but somewhat disarranged bed indeed one hopes for the sleeper's sake that the night is warm and that the room is fairly free from draughts a ladder of light streams down from the sky into the room and upon this ladder crowd and jostle one another a small army of plump cupids each one laden with some pledge of love two of the imps are emptying a sack of jewels upon the floor four others are bearing well displayed a magnificent dress a confection I believe is the proper term cut somewhat low but making up in train what is lacking elsewhere others bear bonnet boxes from which peep's stylish toques and bewitching hoods some representing evidently wholesale houses stagger under silks and satins in the peace cupids are there from the shoemakers with the daintiest of botteens stockings, garters and even less mentionable articles are not forgotten caskets, mirrors 12 buttoned gloves scent bottles and handkerchiefs hairpins and the gayest of parasols has the god of love piled into the arms of his messengers really a most practical up to date god of love moving with the times one feels that the modern temple of love must be a sort of swan and edgars the god himself a kind of celestial shop walker while his mother Venus no doubt super intends the costume department quite an Olympian whitely this latter day eros he has forgotten nothing for at the back of the picture I notice one cupid fat heart at the end of a string you Cinderella could give good counsel to that sleeping child you would say to her awake from such dreams the contents of a pawnbroker's storeroom will not bring you happiness dream of love if you will that is a wise dream even if it remain ever a dream but these coloured beads these Manchester goods are you then you Eres of all the ages still at heart only as some poor savage maiden but little removed above the monkeys that share the primeval forest with her will you sell your gold to the first trader that brings you this barter these things child will only dazzle your eyes for a few days do you think the Burlington arcade is the gate of heaven ah yes I too could talk like that I writer of books to the young lad sick of his office stool dreaming of a literary career leading to fame and fortune and do you think lad that by that road you will reach happiness sooner than by another do you think interviews with yourself in penny weeklies will bring you any satisfaction after the first half dozen do you think the gushing female who has read all your books and who wonders what it must feel like to be so clever will be welcome to you the tenth time you meet her do you think press cuttings will always consist of wandering admiration of your genius of paragraphs about your charming personal appearance under the heading our celebrities have you thought of the uncomplementary criticisms of the spiteful paragraphs of the everlasting fear of slipping a few inches down the greasy pole called popular taste to which you are condemned to cling for life as some lesser criminal to his weary treadmill struggling with no hope but not to fall make a home lad for the woman who loves you gather one or two friends about you work, think and play that will bring you happiness shun this roaring gingerbread fare that calls itself forsooth the world of art and letters let its clowns and its contortionists fight among themselves for the plaudits and the half-pence of the mob let it be with its shouting and its surging its Blair and its cheap flare come away, the summer's night is just the other side of the hedge with its silence and its stars you and I, Cinderella, are experienced people and can therefore offer good advice but do you think we should be listened to? ah no, my prince is not as yours mine will love me always and I'm peculiarly fitted for the life of a palace I have the instinct and the ability for it I am sure I was made for a princess thank you Cinderella for your well-meant counsel but there is much difference between you and me that is the answer you would receive Cinderella and my young friend would say to me yes, I can understand your finding disappointment in the literary career but then you see, our cases are not quite similar I am not likely to find much trouble in keeping my position I shall not fear reading what the critics say of me no doubt there are disadvantages we are among the rook but there is always plenty of room at the top so thank you and goodbye besides Cinderella dear we should not quite mean it, this excellent advice we have grown accustomed to these gyw gaws and we should miss them in spite of our knowledge of their trashiness you, your palace and your little gold crown I, my mountabank's cap answering laugh that goes up from the crowd when I shake my bells we want everything all the happiness that earth and heaven are capable of bestowing creature comforts and heart and soul comforts also and proud spirited beings that we are we will not be put off with a part give us only everything and we will be content and after all Cinderella you have had your day some little dogs never get theirs you must not be greedy you have known happiness the palace was paradise for those few months and the prince's arms were about you Cinderella the prince's kisses on your lips the gods themselves cannot take that from you the cake cannot last forever if we will eat of it so greedily there must come the day when we have picked hungrily the last crumb when we sit staring at the empty board nothing left of the feast Cinderella but the pain that comes of feasting it is a naive confession poor human nature has made to itself in choosing as it has this story of Cinderella for its leading moral be good little girl be meek under your many trials be gentle and kind in spite of your hard lot and one day you shall marry a prince and ride in your own carriage be brave and true little boy work hard and wait with patience and in the end with God's blessing you shall earn riches enough to come back to London town and marry your master's daughter you and I, gentle reader could teach these young folks a truer lesson and we would we know alas that the road of all the virtues does not lead to wealth rather the contrary else how explain our limited incomes but would it be wealth in queue to tell them bluntly the truth that honesty is the most expensive luxury a man can indulge in that virtue if persisted in leads generally speaking to a six-roomed house in an outlying suburb maybe the world is wise the fiction has its uses I am acquainted with a fairly intelligent young lady she can read and write knows her tables up to six times and can argue I regard her as representative of average humanity in its attitude towards fate and this is a dialogue I lately overheard between her and an older lady who is good enough to occasionally impart to her the wisdom of the world I've been good this morning, haven't I? yes oh yes fairly good for you you think papa will take me to the circus tonight? yes if you keep good if you don't get naughty this afternoon a pause I was good on Monday you may remember nurse tolerably good very good you said nurse well yes you weren't bad and I was to have gone to the pantomine and I didn't well that was because your aunt came up suddenly and your papa couldn't get another seat poor auntie wouldn't have gone at all if she hadn't gone then oh wouldn't she? no another pause do you think she'll come up suddenly today? oh no I don't think so no I hope she doesn't I want to go to the circus tonight because you see nurse if I don't it will discourage me so perhaps the world is wise in promising us the circus we believe her at first but after a while I fear we grow discouraged end of chapter 2 chapter 3 of the second thoughts of an idle fellow this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Czech Chris the second thoughts of an idle fellow by Jerome K. Jerome chapter 3 on the exceptional merit attaching to the things we meant to do I can remember but then I can remember a long time ago you gentle reader just entering upon the prime of life that age by thoughtless youth called middle I cannot of course expect to follow me when there was in great demand a certain periodical eclept the amateur its aim was noble it sought to teach the beautiful lesson of independence to inculcate the fine doctrine of self-help one chapter explained to a man how he might make flower pots out of Australian meat cans another how he might turn buttertubs into music stools a third how he might utilise old bonnet boxes for Venetian blinds that was the principle of the whole scheme you made everything from something not intended for it and as ill-suited to the purpose as possible two pages I distinctly recollect were devoted to the encouragement of the manufacture of umbrella stands out of old gas piping anything less adapted to the receipt of hats and umbrellas than gas piping I cannot myself conceive had there been I feel sure the author would have thought of it and would have recommended it picture frames you fashioned out of ginger beer corks you saved your ginger beer corks you found a picture and the thing was complete how much ginger beer it would be necessary to drink preparatory to the making of each frame and the effect of it upon the frame maker's physical, mental and moral well-being did not concern the amateur I calculate that for a fair-sized picture 16 dozen bottles might suffice whether after 16 dozen of ginger beer a man would take any interest in framing a picture whether he would retain any pride in the picture itself is doubtful but this of course was not the point one young gentleman of my acquaintance the son of the gardener of my sister as friend Olyndorff would have described him did succeed in getting through sufficient ginger beer to frame his grandfather but the result was not encouraging indeed the gardener's wife herself was but ill-satisfied what's all them corks round father was her first question can't you see was the somewhat indignant reply that's the frame oh but why corks well the book said corks still the old lady remained unimpressed somehow it don't look like father now she sighed her eldest born grew irritable none of us appreciate criticism what does it look like then well I don't know seems to me to look like nothing but corks the old lady's view was correct certain schools of art possibly lend themselves to this method of framing I myself have seen a funeral card improved by it but generally speaking the consequence was a predominance of frame at the expense of the thing framed the more honest and tasteful of the frame makers would admit as much themselves yes it is ugly when you look at it said one to me as we stood surveying it from the centre of the room but what one feels about it is that one has done it once self which reflection I have noticed reconciles us to many other things beside cork frames another young gentleman friend of mine for I am bound to admit it was youth that profited most by the advice and council of the amateur I suppose as one grows older one grows less daring less industrious made a rocking chair according to the instructions of this book out of a couple of beer barrels from every practical point of view it was a bad rocking chair it rocked too much and it rocked in too many directions at one and the same time I take it a man sitting on a rocking chair does not want to be continually rocking there comes a time when he says to himself now I have rocked sufficiently for the present now I will sit still for a while less the worst thing before me but this was one of those headstrong rocking chairs that are a danger to humanity and a nuisance to themselves its notion was that it was made to rock and that when it was not rocking it was wasting its time once started nothing could stop it nothing ever did stop it until it found itself topsy-turvy on its own occupant that was the only thing that ever sobered it I had called and had been shown into the empty drawing room the rocking chair nodded invitingly at me I never guessed it was an amateur rocking chair I was young in those days with faith in human nature and I imagined that whatever else a man might attempt without knowledge or experience no one would be full enough to experiment upon a rocking chair I threw myself into it lightly and carelessly I immediately noticed the ceiling I made an instinctive movement forward the window and a momentary glimpse of the wooded hills beyond shot upwards and disappeared the carpet flashed to cross my eyes and I caught sight of my own boots vanishing beneath me at the rate of about 200 miles an hour I made a convulsive effort to recover them I suppose I overdid it I saw the whole of the room at once the four walls, the ceiling and the floor at the same moment it was a sort of vision I saw the cottage piano upside down and I again saw my own boots flash past me this time over my head, souls uppermost never before had I been in a position where my own boots had seemed so all-pervading the next moment I lost my boots and stopped the carpet with my head just as it was rushing past me at the same instant something hit me violently in the small of the back reason, when recovered, suggested that my assailant must be the rocking chair investigation proved the surmise correct fortunately I was still alone and in consequence was able a few minutes later to meet my hostess with calm and dignity I said nothing about the rocking chair as a matter of fact I was hoping to have the pleasure before I went of seeing some other guests arrive and sample it I had purposely replaced it in the most prominent and convenient position but though I felt capable of schooling myself to silence I found myself unable to agree with my hostess when she called for my admiration of the thing my recent experiences had too deeply embitted me Willie made it himself explained the fond mother don't you think it was very clever of him? oh yes it was clever I replied I'm willing to admit that he made it out of some old beer barrels she continued she seemed proud of it my resentment though I tried to keep it under control was mounting higher oh did he I said I should have thought he might have found something better to do with them what she asked oh well many things I retorted he might have filled them again with beer my hostess looked at me astonished I felt some reason for my tone was expected you see I explained it is not a well-made chair these rockers are too short and they are too curved and one of them if you notice is higher than the other and of a smaller radius the back is at too obtuse an angle when he's occupied the centre of gravity becomes my hostess interrupted me you have been sitting on it she said not for long I assured her her tone changed she became apologetic I am so sorry she said it looks all right it does I agreed that is where the dear lads cleverness displays itself its appearance disarms suspicion with judgement that chair might be made to serve a really useful purpose there are mutual acquaintances of ours I mention no names you will know them pompous self-satisfied superior persons who would be improved by that chair if I were willy I should disguise the mechanism with some artistic drapery bait the thing with a couple of exceptionally inviting cushions and employ it to inculcate modesty and diffidence I defy any human being to get out of that chair feeling as important as when he got into it what the dear boy has done has been to construct an automatic exponent of the transitory nature of human greatness as a moral agency that chair should prove a blessing in disguise my hostess smiled feebly more I fear from politeness than genuine enjoyment I think you are too severe she said when you remember that the boy has never tried his hand at anything of the kind before that he has no knowledge and no experience it really is not so bad considering the matter from that point of view I was bound to conquer I did not like to suggest to her that before entering upon a difficult task it would be better for young men to acquire knowledge and experience that is so unpopular a theory but the thing that the amateur put in the front and foremost of its propaganda was the manufacture of household furniture out of egg boxes why egg boxes I have never been able to understand but egg boxes according to the prescription of the amateur formed the foundation of household existence with a sufficient supply of egg boxes and what the amateur termed a natural deftness no young couple need hesitate to face the furnishing problem three egg boxes made a writing table on another egg box you sat to write your books were arranged in egg boxes around you and there was your study complete for the dining room two egg boxes made an over mantle four egg boxes and a piece of looking glass a sideboard while six egg boxes with some wadding and the yard or so of Creton constituted a so-called cosy corner about the corner there could be no possible doubt you sat on a corner you lent against a corner whichever way you moved you struck a fresh corner the cosiness however I deny egg boxes I admit can be made useful I am even prepared to imagine them ornamental but cosy? No I have sampled egg boxes in many shapes I speak of years ago when the world and we were younger when our fortune was the future secure in which we hesitated not to set up house upon incomes folks with lesser expectations might have deemed insufficient under such circumstances the sole alternative to the egg box or similar school of furniture would have been the strictly classical consisting of a doorway joined to architectural proportions I have from Saturday to Monday as honoured guest hung my clothes in egg boxes I have sat on an egg box at an egg box to take my dish of tea I have made love on egg boxes I and to feel again the blood running through my veins as then it ran I would be content to sit only on egg boxes till the time should come when I could be buried in an egg box with an egg box reared above me as tombstone I have spent many an evening on an egg box I have gone to bed in egg boxes they have their points I am intending no pun but to claim for them cosiness would be but to deceive how quaint they were those home made rooms they rise out of the shadows and shape themselves again before my eyes I see the knobbly sofa the easy chairs that might have been designed by the grand inquisitor himself the dented settle that was a bed by night the few blue plates purchased in the slums off Wardour Street the enameled stool to which one always stuck the mirror framed in silk the two Japanese fans crossed beneath each cheap engraving the piano cloth embroidered in peacock's feathers by Annie's sister the tea cloth worked by cousin Jenny we dreamt sitting on those egg boxes for we were young ladies and gentlemen with artistic taste of the days when we would eat in Chippendale dining rooms sip our coffee in Louis Cator's drawing rooms and be happy well we have got on some of us since then as Mr Bompers used to say and I notice when on visits that some of us have contrived so that we do sit on Chippendale chairs and cheriton dining tables and are warmed from Adam's fireplaces but army where are the dreams, the hopes, the enthusiasm that clung like the scent of a march morning about those Jim Crack second floors in the dustbin I fear with the creton covered egg boxes and the penny fans fate is so terribly even-handed as she gives she ever takes away she flungers a few shillings and hope where now she doles us out pounds and fears why did not we know how happy we were sitting crowned with sweet conceit upon our egg box thrones yes Dick you have climbed well you edit a great newspaper you spread abroad the message well the message that Sir Joseph Goldbug your proprietor instructs you to spread abroad you teach mankind the lessons that Sir Joseph Goldbug wishes them to learn they say he is to have a peerage next year I'm sure he has earned it and perhaps there may be a knighthood for you Dick Tom you are getting on now you have abandoned those unsailable allegories what rich art patron cares to be told continually by his own walls that Midas had asses ears that Lazarus sits ever at the gate you paint portraits now and everybody tells me you are the coming man that impression of old lady Jezebel was really wonderful the woman looks quite handsome and yet it is her ladyship your touch is truly marvellous but into your success Tom Dick old friend do not there creep moments when you would that we could fish up those old egg boxes from the past refurnish with them the dingy rooms in Camden Town and find there our youth our loves and our beliefs an incident brought back to my mind the other day the thought of all these things I called for the first time upon a man an actor who had asked me to come and see him in the little home where he lives with his old father to my astonishment for the craze I believe has long since died out I found the house half furnished out of packing cases butter tubs and egg boxes my friend earns his 20 pounds a week but it was the old father's hobby so he explained to me the making of these monstrosities and of them he was as proud as though they were specimen furniture out of the South Kensington Museum he took me into the dining room to show me the latest outrage a new bookcase a greater disfigurement to the room which was otherwise pretty furnished could hardly be imagined there was no need for him to assure me as he did that it had been made out of nothing but egg boxes one could see at a glance that it was made out of egg boxes and badly constructed egg boxes at that egg boxes that were a disgrace to the firm that had turned them out egg boxes not worthy the storage of shoppans at 18 The Shilling we went upstairs to my friend's bedroom he opened the door as a man might open the door of a museum of gems the old boy he said as he stood with his hand upon the door knob made everything you see here everything and we entered he drew my attention to the wardrobe now I will hold it up he said while you pull the door open I think the floor must be a bit uneven it wobbles if you're not careful it wobbled notwithstanding but by coaxing and humoring we succeeded without mishap I was surprised to notice a very small supply of clothes within although my friend is a dressy man you see he explained I dare not use it more than I can help I'm a clumsy chap and as likely as not if I happen to be in a hurry I'd have the whole thing over which seemed probable I asked him how he contrived I'd dress in the bathroom as a rule he replied I keep most of my things there of course the old boy doesn't know he showed me a chest of drawers one drawer stood half open I'm bound to leave that drawer open he said I keep the things I use in that they don't shut quite easily these drawers or rather they shut all right but then they won't open it is the weather I think they will open and shut all right in the summer I dare say he is of a hopeful disposition but the pride of the room was the wash stand what do you think of this? cried he enthusiastically a real marble top he did not expatiate further in his excitement he had laid his hand upon the thing with the natural result that it collapsed more by accident than design I caught the jug in my arms I also caught the water it contained the basin rolled on its edge and little damage was done except to me and the soap box I could not pump up much admiration for this wash stand I was feeling too wet what do you do when you want to wash? I asked as together we reset the trap there fell upon him the manner of a conspirator revealing secrets he glanced guiltily round the room then creeping on tiptoe he opened a cupboard behind the bed within was a tin basin and a small can don't tell the old boy he said I keep these things here and wash on the floor that was the best thing I myself ever got out of egg boxes that picture of a deceitful son stealthily washing himself upon the floor behind the bed trembling at every footstep lest it might be the old boy coming to the door one wonders whether the ten commandments are so all sufficient as we good folk deem them whether the eleventh is not worth the whole pack of them that ye love one another with just a common place human practical love could not the other ten be comfortably stowed away into a corner of that one is inclined in one's anarchic moments to agree with Louis Stevenson that to be amiable and cheerful is a good religion for a work-a-day world we are so busy not killing not stealing not coveting our neighbour's wife we have not time to be even just to one another for the little while we are together here need we be so cocksure that our present list of virtues and vices is the only possibly correct and complete one is the kind, unselfish man necessarily a villain because he does not always succeed in suppressing his natural instincts is the narrow-hearted, sour, sold man incapable of a generous thought or act necessarily a saint because he has none have we not, we, Uncle Gid arrived at a wrong method of estimating our frailer brothers and sisters we judge them as critics judge books not by the good that is in them but by their faults poor King David what would the local vigilance society have had to say to him Noah, according to our plan would be denounced from every T-Total platform in the country and Ham would head the local vestri pole as a reward for having exposed him and Saint Peter weak frail Saint Peter how lucky for him that his fellow disciples and their master were not as strict in their notions of virtue as are we today have we not forgotten the meaning of the word virtue once it stood for the good that was in a man irrespective of the evil that might lie there also as tears among the wheat we have abolished virtue and for it substituted virtues not the hero he was too full of faults but the blameless valet not the man who does any good but the man who has not been found out in any evil is our modern ideal the most virtuous thing in nature according to this new theory should be the oyster he is always at home and always sober he is not noisy he gives no trouble to the police I cannot think of a single one of the Ten Commandments that he ever breaks he never enjoys himself and he never so long as he lives gives a moment's pleasure to any other living thing I can imagine the oyster lecturing a lion on the subject of morality you never hear me the oyster might say howling round camps and villages making night hideous frightening quiet folk out of their lives why don't you go to bed early as I do I never prowl round the oyster bed fighting other gentlemen oysters making love to lady oysters already married I never kill antelopes or missionaries why can't you live as I do on salt water and germs or whatever it is that I do live on why don't you try to be more like me an oyster has no evil passions therefore we say he is a virtuous fish we never ask ourselves has he any good passions a lion's behaviour is often such as no just man could condone has he not his good points also will the fat, sleek, virtuous man be as welcome at the gate of heaven as he supposes well some Peter may say to him opening the door a little way and looking him up and down what is it now it's me the virtuous man will reply with an oily self satisfied smile I should say I've come yes I see you have come but what is your claim to admittance what have you done with your three score years and ten done the virtuous man will answer I've done nothing I assure you nothing nothing that's my strong point that's why I'm here I have never done any wrong and what good have you done what good I what good do not you even know the meaning of the word what human creature is the better for your having eaten and drunk and slept these years you have done no harm no harm to yourself perhaps if you had you might have done some good with it the two are generally to be found together down below I remember what good have you done that you should enter here this is no mummy chamber this is the place of men and women who have lived who have wrought good and evil also alas for the sinners who fight for the right not the righteous who run with their souls from the fight it was not however to speak of these things that I remembered the amateur and its lessons my intention was but to lead up to the story of a certain small boy who in the doing of tasks not required of him was exceedingly clever I wish to tell you his story because as do most true tales it possesses a moral and stories without a moral I deem to be but foolish literature resembling roads that lead to nowhere such a sick folk tramp for exercise I have known this little boy to take an expensive eight day clock to pieces and make of it a toy steamboat true it was not when made very much of a steamboat but taking into consideration all the difficulties the in adaptability of eight day clock machinery to steamboat requirements the necessity of getting the work accomplished quickly before conservatively minded people with no enthusiasm for science could interfere I could enough steamboat with merely an ironing board and a few dozen meat skewers he would provided the ironing board was not missed in time turn out quite a practicable rabbit-hutch he could make a gun out of an umbrella and a gas bracket which, if not so accurate as a Martini Henry was at all events more deadly with half the garden hose a copper scalding pan out of the dairy and a few Dresden China ornaments off the drawing room mantelpiece he would build a fountain for the garden he could make bookshelves out of kitchen tables and crossbows out of crinolins he could damn you a stream so that all the water would flow over the croquet lawn he knew how to make red paint and oxygen gas together with many other such like commodities handy to have about a house among other things he learned how to make fireworks and after a few explosions of an unimportant character came to make them very well indeed the boy who can play a good game of cricket is liked the boy who can fight well is respected the boy who can cheat a master is loved but the boy who can make fireworks is revered above all others as a boy belonging to a superior order of beings the fifth of November was at hand and with the consent of an indulgent mother he determined to give to the world a proof of his powers a large party of friends, relatives and schoolmates was invited and for a fortnight beforehand the scullery was converted into a manufactory for fireworks the female servants went about in hourly terror of their lives and the villar did we judge exclusively by smell one might have imagined had been taken over by Satan his main premises being inconveniently crowded as an annex by the evening of the fourth all was in readiness and samples were tested to make sure no contra-tomp should occur the following night all was found to be perfect the rockets rushed heavenward and descended in stars the Roman candles tossed their fiery balls into the darkness the Catherine wheels sparkled and whirled the crackers cracked and the squibs banged that night he went to bed a proud and happy boy and dreamed of fame he stood surrounded by blazing fireworks and the vast crowd cheered him his relations, most of whom he knew regarded him as the coming idiot of the family were there to witness his triumph so too was Dickie Bowles who laughed at him because he could not throw straight the girl at the mun shop she also was there and saw that he was clever the night of the festival arrived and with it the guests they sat wrapped up in shawls and cloaks outside the hall door uncles, cousins, aunts, little boys and big boys little girls and big girls with, as the theatre posters say, villages and retainers some 40 of them in all and waited but the fireworks did not go off why they did not go off I cannot explain nobody ever could explain the laws of nature seemed to be suspended for that night only the rockets fell down and died where they stood no human agency seemed able to ignite the squibs the crackers gave one bang and collapsed the roman candles might have been English rush lights the Catherine wheels became mere revolving glow worms the fiery serpents could not collect among them the spirit of a tortoise the set piece, a ship at sea, showed one mast and the captain and then went out one or two items did their duty but this only served to render the foolishness of the whole more striking the little girls giggled the little boys chaffed the aunts and cousins said it was beautiful the uncles inquired if it was all over and talked about supper and trains the villagers and retainers dispersed laughing the indulgent mother said, never mind and explained how well everything had gone off yesterday the clever little boy crept upstairs to his room and blobbed his heart out in the dark hours later when the crowd had forgotten him he stole out again into the garden he sat down amid the ruins of his hope and wondered what could have caused the fiasco still puzzled he drew from his pocket a box of matches and lighting one he held it to the seared end of a rocket he had tried in vain to light four hours ago it smouldered for an instant then shot with a swish into the air and broke into a hundred points of fire he tried another and another with the same result he made a fresh attempt to fire the set piece point by point the whole picture minus the captain and one mast came out of the night and stood revealed in all the majesty of flame its sparks fell upon the piled-up heap of candles wheels and rockets that little while before had obstinately refused to burn and that one after another had been thrown aside as useless now with the night frost upon them they leaped to light in one grand volcanic eruption and in front of the gorgeous spectacle he stood with only one consolation his mother's hand in his the whole thing was a mystery to him at the time but as he learned to know life better he came to understand that it was only one example of a solid but inexplicable fact ruling all human affairs your fireworks won't go off while the crowd is around our brilliant rep-arties do not occur to us till the door is closed upon us and we are alone in the street or as the French would say are coming down the stairs our after-dinner oratory that sounded so telling as we delivered it before the looking-glass all strangely flat amidst the clinking of the glasses the passionate torrent of words we meant to pour into her ear becomes a halting rigmarole at which small blame to her she only laughs I would, gentle reader, you could hear the stories that I meant to tell you you judge me of course by the stories of mine that you have read by this sort of thing perhaps but that is not just to me the stories I have not told you that I am going to tell you one day I would that you judge me by those they are so beautiful you will say so over them you will laugh and cry with me they come into my brain unbidden they clamour to be written yet when I take my pen in hand they are gone it is as though they were shy of publicity as though they would say to me you alone you shall read us but you must not write us we are too real too true we are like the thoughts you cannot speak perhaps a little later when you know more of life then you shall tell us next to these in merit I would place were I writing a critical essay on myself the stories I have begun to write and that remain unfinished why I cannot explain to myself they are good stories most of them better far than the stories I have accomplished another time perhaps if you care to listen I will tell you the beginning of one or two and you shall judge strangely enough for I've always regarded myself as a practical common-sensed man so many of these stillborn children of my mind I find on looking through the cupboard where their thin bodies lie are ghost stories I suppose the hope of ghosts is with us all the world grows somewhat interesting to us heirs of all the ages year by year science with broom and duster tears down the moth-worn tapestry forces the doors of the locked chambers lets light into the secret stairways cleans out the dungeons explores the hidden passages finding everywhere only dust this echoing old castle the world so full of mystery in the days when we were children is losing somewhat its charm for us as we grow older the king sleeps no longer in the hollow of the hills we have tunneled through his mountain chamber we have shivered his beard with our pick we have driven the gods from Olympus no wanderer through the moonlit groves now fears or hopes the sweet death-giving gleam of Aphrodite's face Thor's hammer echoes not among the peaks it is but the thunder of the excursion train we have swept the woods of the fairies we have filtered the sea of its nymphs even the ghosts are leaving us chased by the Psychical Research Society perhaps of all they are the least however to be regretted they were dull old fellows clanking their rusty chains and groaning and sighing let them go and yet how interesting they might be if only they would the old gentleman in the coat of mail who lived in King John's reign who was murdered so they say on the outskirts of the very wood I can see from my window as I write stabbed in the back poor gentleman as he was riding home his body flung into the moat that to this day is called Thor's tomb dry enough it is now and the primrosers love its steep banks but a gloomy enough place in those days no doubt with its 20 feet of stagnant water why does he haunt the forest paths at night as they tell me he does frightening the children out of their wits blanching the faces and stilling the laughter of the peasant lads and lassers slouching home from the village dance instead why does he not come up here and talk to me he should have my easy chair and welcome would he only be cheerful and companionable what brave tales could he not tell me he fought in the first crusade heard the clarion voice of Peter met the great Godfrey face to face stood hand on sword hilt at Runnymed perhaps better than a whole library of historical novels would an evening's chat be with such a ghost what has he done with his 800 years of death where has he been what has he seen maybe he has visited Mars has spoken to the strange spirits who can live in the liquid fires of Jupiter what has he learned of the great secret has he found the truth or is he even as I a wanderer still seeking the unknown you poor pale grey nun they tell me that of midnight's one may see your white face peering from the ruined belfry window hear the clash of sword and shield among the cedar trees beneath it was very sad I quite understand my dear lady your lovers both were killed and you retired to a convent believe me I am sincerely sorry for you but why waste every night renewing the whole painful experience would it not be better forgotten good heavens madam suppose we living folk were to spend our lives wailing and ringing our hands because of the wrongs done to us when we were children it is all over now had he lived and had you married him you might not have been happy I do not wish to say anything unkind but marriages founded upon the sincerest mutual love have sometimes turned out unfortunately as you must surely know do take my advice talk the matter over with the young men themselves persuade them to shake hands and be friends come in all of you out of the cold let us have some reasonable talk why seek you to trouble us you poor pale ghosts are we not your children be our wise friends tell me how loved the young men in your young days how answered the maidens has the world changed much do you think had you not knew women even then girls who hated the everlasting tapestry frame your father's servants were they so much worse off than the free men who live in our east end slums and so slippers for 14 hours a day at a wage of 9 shillings a week do you think society much improved during the last thousand years is it worse, is it better or is it on the whole about the same save that we call things by other names tell me what have you learned yet might not familiarity breed contempt even for ghosts one has had a tiring day shooting one is looking forward to one's bed as one opens the door however a ghostly laugh comes from behind the bed curtains and one groans inwardly knowing what is in store for one a two or three hours talk with rowdy ol salanfel he of the lance we know all his tales by heart and he will shout them suppose our aunt from whom we have expectations and who sleeps in the next room should wake and over here they were fit and proper enough stories no doubt for the round table but we feel sure our aunt would not appreciate them that story about Sir Agriven and the Cooper's wife and he always will tell that story or imagine the maid entering after dinner to say oh if you please sir here is the veiled lady what again says your wife looking up from her work yes ma'am shall I show her up into the bedroom you had better ask your master is the reply the tone is suggestive of an unpleasant five minutes so soon as the girl shall have withdrawn but what are you to do yes yes show her up you say and the girl goes out closing the door your wife gathers her work together and rises where are you going you ask to sleep with the children is the frigid answer it will look so rude you urge we must be civil to the poor thing and you see it really is her room as one might say she has always haunted it it is very curious returns the wife of your bosom still more icily that she never haunts it except when you were down here where she goes when you are in town I'm sure I don't know this is unjust you cannot restrain your indignation what nonsense you talk Elizabeth you reply I'm only barely polite to her some men have such curious notions of politeness returns Elizabeth but pray do not let us quarrel I am only anxious not to disturb you to our company you know I don't choose to be the third that's all with which she goes out and the veiled lady is still waiting for you upstairs you wonder how long she will stop also what will happen after she is gone I fear there is no room for you ghosts in this hour world you remember how they came to Hiawatha the ghosts of the departed loved ones and prayed to them that they would come back to him to comfort him so one day they crept into his wigwam sat in silence round his fireside chilled the air for Hiawatha froze the smiles of laughing water there is no room for you oh you poor pale ghosts in this hour world do not trouble us let us forget you stout elderly matron your thin locks turning grey your eyes grown weak your chin more ample your voice harsh with much scolding and complaining needful alas to household management I pray you leave me I loved you while you lived how sweet, how beautiful you were I see you now in your white frock among the apple blossom but you are dead and your ghost disturbs my dreams I would it haunt at me not you dull old fellow looking out at me from the glass at which I shave why do you haunt me you are the ghost of a bright lad I once knew well he might have done much had he lived I always had faith in him why do you haunt me I would rather think of him as I remember him I never imagined he would make such a poor ghost End of chapter 3