I've been lire the novel THREE MEN IN A BOAT
here are some funny parts of the first three chapters of the novel Jerome K Jerome:
Camping out in rainy weather is not pleasant.
It is evening. toi are wet through, and there is a good two inches of water in the boat, and all the things are damp. toi find a place on the banks that is not quite so puddly as other places toi have seen, and toi land and lug out the tent, and two of toi proceed to fix it.
It is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles down on you, and clings round your head and makes toi mad. The rain is pouring steadily down all the time. It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather: in wet, the task becomes herculean. Instead of helping you, it seems to toi that the other man is simply playing the fool. Just as toi get your side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end, and spoils it all.
“Here! what are toi up to?” toi call out.
“What are toi up to?” he retorts; “leggo, can’t you?”
“Don’t pull it; you’ve got it all wrong, toi stupid ass!” toi shout.
“No, I haven’t,” he yells back; “let go your side!”
“I tell toi you’ve got it all wrong!” toi roar, wishing that toi could get at him; and toi give your ropes a lug that pulls all his pegs out.
Ah, the bally idiot!” toi hear him mutter to himself; and then comes a savage haul, and away goes your side. toi lay down the mallet and start to go round and tell him what toi think about the whole business, and, at the same time, he starts round in the same direction to come and explain his vues to you. And toi follow each other round and round, swearing at one another, until the tent tumbles down in a heap, and leaves toi looking at each other across its ruins, when toi both indignantly exclaim, in the same breath:
“There toi are! what did I tell you?”
After supper, toi find your tobacco is damp, and toi cannot smoke. Luckily toi have a bottle of the stuff that cheers and inebriates, if taken in proper quantity, and this restores to toi sufficient interest in life to induce toi to go to bed.
There toi dream that an éléphant has suddenly sat down on your chest, and that the volcan has exploded and thrown toi down to the bottom of the sea — the éléphant still sleeping peacefully on your bosom. toi wake up and grasp the idea that something terrible really has happened. Your first impression is that the end of the world has come; and then toi think that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers, ou else fire, and this opinion toi express in the usual method. No help comes, however, and all toi know is that thousands of people are kicking you, and toi are being smothered.
Somebody else seems in trouble, too. toi can hear his faint cries coming from underneath your bed. Determining, at all events, to sell your life dearly, toi struggle frantically, hitting out right and left with arms and legs, and yelling lustily the while, and at last something gives way, and toi find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, toi dimly observe a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, and toi are preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when it begins to dawn upon toi that it’s Jim.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he says, recognising toi at the same moment.
“Yes,” toi answer, rubbing your eyes; “what’s happened?”
“Bally tent’s blown down, I think,” he says.
“Where’s Bill?”
Then toi both raise up your voices and shout for “Bill!” and the ground beneath toi heaves and rocks, and the muffled voice that toi heard before réponses from out the ruin:
“Get off my head, can’t you?”
toi never saw such a commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would have come accueil from the frame-maker’s, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say:
“Oh, toi leave that to me. Don’t you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I’ll do all that.”
And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would send the girl out for sixpen’orth of nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually work down, and start the whole house.
“Now toi go and get me my hammer, Will,” he would shout; “and toi bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the step-ladder, and I had better have a kitchen-chair, too; and, Jim! toi run round to Mr. Goggles, and tell him, ‘Pa’s kind regards, and hopes his leg’s better; and will he lend him his spirit-level?’ And don’t toi go, Maria, because I shall want somebody to hold me the light; and when the girl comes back, she must go out again for a bit of picture-cord; and Tom! — where’s Tom? — Tom, toi come here; I shall want toi to hand me up the picture.”
And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come out of the frame, and he would try to save the glass, and cut himself; and then he would spring round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the manteau he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat, and all the house had to leave off looking for his tools, and start looking for his coat; while he would dance round and hinder them.
“Doesn’t anybody in the whole house know where my manteau is? I never came across such a set in all my life — upon my word I didn’t. Six of you! — and toi can’t find a manteau that I put down not five minutes ago! Well, of all the — ”
Then he’d get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call out:
“Oh, toi can give it up! I’ve found it myself now. Might just as well ask the cat to find anything as expect toi people to find it.”
And, when half an heure had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new glass had been got, and the tools, and the ladder, and the chair, and the candle had been brought, he would have another go, the whole family, including the girl and the charwoman, standing round in a semi-circle, ready to help. Two people would have to hold the chair, and a third would help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand him a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold of the nail, and drop it.
“There!” he would say, in an injured tone, “now the nail’s gone.”
And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it, while he would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if he was to be kept there all the evening.
The nail would be found at last, but par that time he would have Lost the hammer.
“Where’s the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great heavens! Seven of you, gaping round there, and toi don’t know what I did with the hammer!”
We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have Lost sight of the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in, and each of us had to get up on the chair, beside him, and see if we could find it; and we would each discover it in a different place, and he would call us all fools, one after another, and tell us to get down. And he would take the rule, and re-measure, and find that he wanted half thirty-one and three-eighths inches from the corner, and would try to do it in his head, and go mad.
And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive at different results, and sneer at one another. And in the general row, the original number would be forgotten, and Uncle Podger would have to measure it again.
He would use a bit of string this time, and at the critical moment, when the old fool was leaning over the chair at an angle of forty-five, and trying to reach a point three inches beyond what was possible for him to reach, the string would slip, and down he would slide on to the piano, a really fine musical effect being produced par the suddenness with which his head and body struck all the notes at the same time.
And Aunt Maria would say that she would not allow the children to stand round and hear such language.
At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed again, and put the point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his right hand. And, with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop the hammer, with a yell, on somebody’s toes.
Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, suivant time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he’d let her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done.
“Oh! toi women, toi make such a fuss over everything,” Uncle Podger would reply, picking himself up. “Why, I like doing a little job of this sort.”
And then he would have another try, and, at the seconde blow, the nail would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it, and Uncle Podger be precipitated against the mur with force nearly sufficient to flatten his nose.
Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up — very crooked and insecure, the mur for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched — except Uncle Podger.
“There toi are,” he would say, stepping heavily off the chair on to the charwoman’s corns, and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride. “Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like that!”
I did not say anything, but started the packing. It seemed a longer job than I had thought it was going to be; but I got the bag finished at last, and I sat on it and strapped it.
“Ain’t toi going to put the boots in?” a dit Harris.
And I looked round, and found I had forgotten them. That’s just like Harris. He couldn’t have a dit a word until I’d got the bag shut and strapped, of course. And George laughed — one of those irritating, senseless, chuckle-headed, crack-jawed laughs of his. They do make me so wild.
I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-brush? I don’t know how it is, but I never do know whether I’ve packed my tooth-brush.
My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I’m travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven’t packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of lit and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief.
Of course I had to turn every mortal thing out now, and, of course, I could not find it. I rummaged the things up into much the same state that they must have been before the world was created, and when chaos reigned. Of course, I found George’s and Harris’s eighteen times over, but I couldn’t find my own. I put the things back one par one, and held everything up and shook it. Then I found it inside a boot. I repacked once more.
When I had finished, George asked if the soap was in. I a dit I didn’t care a hang whether the soap was in ou whether it wasn’t; and I slammed the bag to and strapped it, and found that I had packed my tobacco-pouch in it, and had to re-open it. It got shut up finally at 10.5 p.m., and then there remained the hampers to do. Harris a dit that we should be wanting to start in less than twelve hours’ time, and thought that he and George had better do the rest; and I agreed and sat down, and they had a go.
They began in a light-hearted spirit, evidently intending to montrer me how to do it. I made no comment; I only waited. When George is hanged, Harris will be the worst packer in this world; and I looked at the piles of plates and cups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes, &c., and felt that the thing would soon become exciting.
It did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing they did. They did that just to montrer toi what they could do, and to get toi interested.
Then Harris packed the fraise confiture on haut, retour au début of a tomate and squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomate with a teaspoon.
And then it was George’s turn, and he trod on the butter. I didn’t say anything, but I came over and sat on the edge of the table, tableau and watched them. It irritated them plus than anything I could have said. I felt that. It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped on things, and put things behind them, and then couldn’t find them when they wanted them; and they packed the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed the pies in.
They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter! I never saw two men do plus with one-and-twopence worth of beurre in my whole life than they did. After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it in the kettle. It wouldn’t go in, and what was in wouldn’t come out. They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking for it all over the room.
“I’ll take my oath I put it down on that chair,” a dit George, staring at the empty seat.
“I saw toi do it myself, not a minute ago,” a dit Harris.
Then they started round the room again looking for it; and then they met again in the centre, and stared at one another.
“Most extraordinary thing I ever heard of,” a dit George.
“So mysterious!” a dit Harris.
Then George got round at the back of Harris and saw it.
“Why, here it is all the time,” he exclaimed, indignantly.
“Where?” cried Harris, spinning round.
“Stand still, can’t you!” roared George, flying after him.
And they got it off, and packed it in the teapot.
Montmorency was in it all, of course. Montmorency’s ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his jour has not been wasted.
To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadily for an hour, is his highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in accomplishing this, his conceit becomes quite unbearable.
He came and sat down on things, just when they were wanted to be packed; and he laboured under the fixed belief that, whenever Harris ou George reached out their hand for anything, it was his cold, damp nose that they wanted. He put his leg into the jam, and he worried the teaspoons, and he pretended that the lemons were rats, and got into the hamper and killed three of them before Harris could land him with the frying-pan.
Harris a dit I encouraged him. I didn’t encourage him. A dog like that don’t want any encouragement. It’s the natural, original sin that is born in him that makes him do things like that.
The packing was done at 12.50; and Harris sat on the big hamper, and a dit he hoped nothing would be found broken. George a dit that if anything was broken it was broken, which reflection seemed to comfort him. He also a dit he was ready for bed.
here are some funny parts of the first three chapters of the novel Jerome K Jerome:
Camping out in rainy weather is not pleasant.
It is evening. toi are wet through, and there is a good two inches of water in the boat, and all the things are damp. toi find a place on the banks that is not quite so puddly as other places toi have seen, and toi land and lug out the tent, and two of toi proceed to fix it.
It is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles down on you, and clings round your head and makes toi mad. The rain is pouring steadily down all the time. It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather: in wet, the task becomes herculean. Instead of helping you, it seems to toi that the other man is simply playing the fool. Just as toi get your side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end, and spoils it all.
“Here! what are toi up to?” toi call out.
“What are toi up to?” he retorts; “leggo, can’t you?”
“Don’t pull it; you’ve got it all wrong, toi stupid ass!” toi shout.
“No, I haven’t,” he yells back; “let go your side!”
“I tell toi you’ve got it all wrong!” toi roar, wishing that toi could get at him; and toi give your ropes a lug that pulls all his pegs out.
Ah, the bally idiot!” toi hear him mutter to himself; and then comes a savage haul, and away goes your side. toi lay down the mallet and start to go round and tell him what toi think about the whole business, and, at the same time, he starts round in the same direction to come and explain his vues to you. And toi follow each other round and round, swearing at one another, until the tent tumbles down in a heap, and leaves toi looking at each other across its ruins, when toi both indignantly exclaim, in the same breath:
“There toi are! what did I tell you?”
After supper, toi find your tobacco is damp, and toi cannot smoke. Luckily toi have a bottle of the stuff that cheers and inebriates, if taken in proper quantity, and this restores to toi sufficient interest in life to induce toi to go to bed.
There toi dream that an éléphant has suddenly sat down on your chest, and that the volcan has exploded and thrown toi down to the bottom of the sea — the éléphant still sleeping peacefully on your bosom. toi wake up and grasp the idea that something terrible really has happened. Your first impression is that the end of the world has come; and then toi think that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers, ou else fire, and this opinion toi express in the usual method. No help comes, however, and all toi know is that thousands of people are kicking you, and toi are being smothered.
Somebody else seems in trouble, too. toi can hear his faint cries coming from underneath your bed. Determining, at all events, to sell your life dearly, toi struggle frantically, hitting out right and left with arms and legs, and yelling lustily the while, and at last something gives way, and toi find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, toi dimly observe a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, and toi are preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when it begins to dawn upon toi that it’s Jim.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he says, recognising toi at the same moment.
“Yes,” toi answer, rubbing your eyes; “what’s happened?”
“Bally tent’s blown down, I think,” he says.
“Where’s Bill?”
Then toi both raise up your voices and shout for “Bill!” and the ground beneath toi heaves and rocks, and the muffled voice that toi heard before réponses from out the ruin:
“Get off my head, can’t you?”
toi never saw such a commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would have come accueil from the frame-maker’s, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say:
“Oh, toi leave that to me. Don’t you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I’ll do all that.”
And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would send the girl out for sixpen’orth of nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually work down, and start the whole house.
“Now toi go and get me my hammer, Will,” he would shout; “and toi bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the step-ladder, and I had better have a kitchen-chair, too; and, Jim! toi run round to Mr. Goggles, and tell him, ‘Pa’s kind regards, and hopes his leg’s better; and will he lend him his spirit-level?’ And don’t toi go, Maria, because I shall want somebody to hold me the light; and when the girl comes back, she must go out again for a bit of picture-cord; and Tom! — where’s Tom? — Tom, toi come here; I shall want toi to hand me up the picture.”
And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come out of the frame, and he would try to save the glass, and cut himself; and then he would spring round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the manteau he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat, and all the house had to leave off looking for his tools, and start looking for his coat; while he would dance round and hinder them.
“Doesn’t anybody in the whole house know where my manteau is? I never came across such a set in all my life — upon my word I didn’t. Six of you! — and toi can’t find a manteau that I put down not five minutes ago! Well, of all the — ”
Then he’d get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call out:
“Oh, toi can give it up! I’ve found it myself now. Might just as well ask the cat to find anything as expect toi people to find it.”
And, when half an heure had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new glass had been got, and the tools, and the ladder, and the chair, and the candle had been brought, he would have another go, the whole family, including the girl and the charwoman, standing round in a semi-circle, ready to help. Two people would have to hold the chair, and a third would help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand him a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold of the nail, and drop it.
“There!” he would say, in an injured tone, “now the nail’s gone.”
And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it, while he would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if he was to be kept there all the evening.
The nail would be found at last, but par that time he would have Lost the hammer.
“Where’s the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great heavens! Seven of you, gaping round there, and toi don’t know what I did with the hammer!”
We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have Lost sight of the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in, and each of us had to get up on the chair, beside him, and see if we could find it; and we would each discover it in a different place, and he would call us all fools, one after another, and tell us to get down. And he would take the rule, and re-measure, and find that he wanted half thirty-one and three-eighths inches from the corner, and would try to do it in his head, and go mad.
And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive at different results, and sneer at one another. And in the general row, the original number would be forgotten, and Uncle Podger would have to measure it again.
He would use a bit of string this time, and at the critical moment, when the old fool was leaning over the chair at an angle of forty-five, and trying to reach a point three inches beyond what was possible for him to reach, the string would slip, and down he would slide on to the piano, a really fine musical effect being produced par the suddenness with which his head and body struck all the notes at the same time.
And Aunt Maria would say that she would not allow the children to stand round and hear such language.
At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed again, and put the point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his right hand. And, with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop the hammer, with a yell, on somebody’s toes.
Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, suivant time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he’d let her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done.
“Oh! toi women, toi make such a fuss over everything,” Uncle Podger would reply, picking himself up. “Why, I like doing a little job of this sort.”
And then he would have another try, and, at the seconde blow, the nail would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it, and Uncle Podger be precipitated against the mur with force nearly sufficient to flatten his nose.
Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up — very crooked and insecure, the mur for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched — except Uncle Podger.
“There toi are,” he would say, stepping heavily off the chair on to the charwoman’s corns, and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride. “Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like that!”
I did not say anything, but started the packing. It seemed a longer job than I had thought it was going to be; but I got the bag finished at last, and I sat on it and strapped it.
“Ain’t toi going to put the boots in?” a dit Harris.
And I looked round, and found I had forgotten them. That’s just like Harris. He couldn’t have a dit a word until I’d got the bag shut and strapped, of course. And George laughed — one of those irritating, senseless, chuckle-headed, crack-jawed laughs of his. They do make me so wild.
I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-brush? I don’t know how it is, but I never do know whether I’ve packed my tooth-brush.
My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I’m travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven’t packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of lit and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief.
Of course I had to turn every mortal thing out now, and, of course, I could not find it. I rummaged the things up into much the same state that they must have been before the world was created, and when chaos reigned. Of course, I found George’s and Harris’s eighteen times over, but I couldn’t find my own. I put the things back one par one, and held everything up and shook it. Then I found it inside a boot. I repacked once more.
When I had finished, George asked if the soap was in. I a dit I didn’t care a hang whether the soap was in ou whether it wasn’t; and I slammed the bag to and strapped it, and found that I had packed my tobacco-pouch in it, and had to re-open it. It got shut up finally at 10.5 p.m., and then there remained the hampers to do. Harris a dit that we should be wanting to start in less than twelve hours’ time, and thought that he and George had better do the rest; and I agreed and sat down, and they had a go.
They began in a light-hearted spirit, evidently intending to montrer me how to do it. I made no comment; I only waited. When George is hanged, Harris will be the worst packer in this world; and I looked at the piles of plates and cups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes, &c., and felt that the thing would soon become exciting.
It did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing they did. They did that just to montrer toi what they could do, and to get toi interested.
Then Harris packed the fraise confiture on haut, retour au début of a tomate and squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomate with a teaspoon.
And then it was George’s turn, and he trod on the butter. I didn’t say anything, but I came over and sat on the edge of the table, tableau and watched them. It irritated them plus than anything I could have said. I felt that. It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped on things, and put things behind them, and then couldn’t find them when they wanted them; and they packed the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed the pies in.
They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter! I never saw two men do plus with one-and-twopence worth of beurre in my whole life than they did. After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it in the kettle. It wouldn’t go in, and what was in wouldn’t come out. They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking for it all over the room.
“I’ll take my oath I put it down on that chair,” a dit George, staring at the empty seat.
“I saw toi do it myself, not a minute ago,” a dit Harris.
Then they started round the room again looking for it; and then they met again in the centre, and stared at one another.
“Most extraordinary thing I ever heard of,” a dit George.
“So mysterious!” a dit Harris.
Then George got round at the back of Harris and saw it.
“Why, here it is all the time,” he exclaimed, indignantly.
“Where?” cried Harris, spinning round.
“Stand still, can’t you!” roared George, flying after him.
And they got it off, and packed it in the teapot.
Montmorency was in it all, of course. Montmorency’s ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his jour has not been wasted.
To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadily for an hour, is his highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in accomplishing this, his conceit becomes quite unbearable.
He came and sat down on things, just when they were wanted to be packed; and he laboured under the fixed belief that, whenever Harris ou George reached out their hand for anything, it was his cold, damp nose that they wanted. He put his leg into the jam, and he worried the teaspoons, and he pretended that the lemons were rats, and got into the hamper and killed three of them before Harris could land him with the frying-pan.
Harris a dit I encouraged him. I didn’t encourage him. A dog like that don’t want any encouragement. It’s the natural, original sin that is born in him that makes him do things like that.
The packing was done at 12.50; and Harris sat on the big hamper, and a dit he hoped nothing would be found broken. George a dit that if anything was broken it was broken, which reflection seemed to comfort him. He also a dit he was ready for bed.