Kitobni o'qish: «Three men in a boat / Трое в лодке, не считая собаки. Книга для чтения на английском языке»

CHAPTER I

There were four of us – George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how bad we were – bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.

We were all feeling unwell, and we were getting quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of lighth-headedness, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said that he had fits of light-headedness too, and hardly knew what he was doing. With me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver, because I had read a liver-pill leaflet, in which the symptoms were described by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.

It is the most extraordinary thing, but whenever I read a medicine advertisement I always make a conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease. I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight illness – hay fever¹. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then I turned the leaves, and began to study diseases. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance² – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and so started alphabetically. Cholera I had, with serious complications; and diphtheria I was born with. I patently studied the twenty-six letters, and the only disease I had not got was housemaid’s knee³.

I sat and thought it over. What an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what a gift I should be to a class! Students would have no need to “walk the hospitals,” if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need to do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.

Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, suddenly, it started off. I pulled out my watch and counted. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I patted myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit round each side, and a little way up the back. But I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far as ever, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it with the other. I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a weak wreck.

I went to my medical man. He is my old friend, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, when I fancy I’m ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn⁴ by going to him now. “What a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, usual patients, with only one or two diseases each.” So I went straight up and saw him, and he said: “Well, what’s the matter with you?”

I said: “I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. But I will tell you what is not the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I have got.”

And I told him how I discovered it all. Then he examined me. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it to me, and I put it in my pocket and went out. I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back. He said he didn’t keep it.

I said: “You are a chemist?”

He said: “I am a chemist. If I was a store and family hotel combined, I might be able to help you. But I am only a chemist.”

I read the prescription. It ran:

“1 lb.⁵ beefsteak, with 1 pt.⁶ bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning.

1 bed at 11 every night.

And don’t stuff up your head with things you don’t understand.⁷”

I followed the directions and my life is still going on.

In the present instance, going back to the liver-pill leaflet, I had all the symptoms, the chief among them was “a general dislike of any work.” As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. My parents did not know, then, that it was my liver and they used to put it down to laziness. “You lazy little devil, you,” they used to say, “get up and do something for your living, can’t you?” – not knowing, of course, that I was ill. And they didn’t give me pills; they gave me clumps on the side of the head. And those clumps on the head often cured me better than a whole box of pills does now.

We sat there for half-an-hour, describing to each other our diseases. I explained to George and William Harris how I felt when I got up in the morning, and William Harris told us how he felt when he went to bed; and George illustrated us by acting how he felt at night.

At this point, Mrs. Poppets knocked at the door and brought in the tray with supper. I must have been very weak at the time; because after the first half-hour or so, I seemed to take no interest in my food – an unusual thing for me – and I didn’t want any cheese.

After the supper, we refilled our glasses, lit our pipes, and continued to discuss our state of health. What was the matter with us we couldn’t be sure of;

but all of us believed that it – whatever it was – was a result of overwork.

“What we want is rest,” said Harris.

“Rest and a complete change,” said George. “Change of scene and no necessity for thought.”

I agreed with George, and suggested that we should look for some quiet place, far from the noisy world, and spend there a sunny week.

“If you want rest and change, you can’t beat a sea trip,” said Harris.

I objected to the sea trip strongly. A sea trip does you good when you are going to have a couple of months of it, but, for a week, it is wicked. You start on Monday thinking that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus⁸ all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn’t come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a little beef tea⁹, and to sit up on deck, and answer with a faint, sweet smile when kind-hearted people ask you how you feel now. On Sunday, you begin to walk about again, and take solid food. And on Monday morning, as, with your bag and umbrella in your hand, you are getting ready to step on the shore, you begin to really like it.

I remember my brother-in-law going for a short sea trip once, for the benefit of his health. He took a return ticket from London to Liverpool; and when he got to Liverpool, the only thing he was anxious about was to sell that return ticket. It was offered round the town at a tremendous reduction, so I am told; and was eventually sold for eighteen-pence to a bilious-looking youth who had just been advised by his medical men to go to the sea-side, and take exercise.

“Sea-side!” said my brother-in-law, pressing the ticket affectionately into his hand; “why, you’ll have enough to last you a lifetime; and as for exercise! why, you’ll get more exercise, sitting down on that ship, than you would on dry land.” He himself – my brother-in-law – came back by train. He said the North-Western Railway was healthy enough for him.

Another fellow I knew went for a week’s voyage round the coast, and, before they started, the steward came to him to ask whether he would pay for each meal as he had it, or arrange beforehand for the whole series. The steward recommended the latter course, as it would come so much cheaper. He said they would do him for the whole week at two pounds five. He said for breakfast there would be fish, followed by a grill. Lunch was at one, and consisted of four courses. Dinner at six – soup, fish, entree, joint, poultry, salad, sweets, cheese, and dessert. And a light meat supper at ten.

Lunch came just as they were off Sheerness. He didn’t feel so hungry as he thought he should, and so contented himself with a bit of boiled beef, and some strawberries and cream. He thought a good deal during the afternoon, and at one time it seemed to him that he had been eating nothing but boiled beef for weeks¹⁰, and at other times it seemed that he must have been living on strawberries and cream for years. Neither the beef nor the strawberries and cream seemed happy, either – seemed discontented like.

At six, they came and told him dinner was ready. The announcement aroused no enthusiasm within him, but he felt that there was some of that two-pound-five to be worked off, and he held on to ropes and things and went down. A pleasant odour of onions and hot ham, mixed with fried fish and greens, greeted him at the bottom of the ladder; and then the steward came up with an oily smile, and said:

“What can I get you, sir?”

“Get me out of this,” was the faint reply.

And they helped him to get upstairs, and left him. For the next four days he lived a simple life on thin captain’s biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain) and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he felt better, and went in for weak tea and dry toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on chicken broth. He left the ship on Tuesday, and as it steamed away he gazed after it regretfully.

“There she goes,” he said, “there she goes, with two pounds’ worth of food on board that belongs to me, and that I haven’t had.” He said that if they had given him another day he thought he could have put it right¹¹.

So I was against the sea trip. Not, as I explained, upon my own account. But I was afraid for George. George said he should be all right, and would rather like it, but he would advise Harris and me not to think of it, as he felt sure we should both be ill. Harris said that, to himself, it was always a mystery how people managed to get sick at sea – said he thought people must do it on purpose – said he had often wished to be, but had never been able. Then he told us the anecdote of how he had gone across the Channel when it was so rough that the passengers had to be tied into their berths, and he and the captain were the only two people on board who were not ill.

It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick – on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people¹² very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.

If most men were like a fellow I saw on the Yarmouth boat one day, I could account for the seeming mystery easily enough. It was just off Southend Pier, I recollect, and he was leaning out through one of the port-holes in a very dangerous position. I went up to him to try and save him.

“Hi! come further in,” I said, shaking him by the shoulder. “You’ll be overboard.”

“Oh my! I wish I was,” was the only answer I could get; and there I had to leave him.

Three weeks afterwards, I met him in the coffee-room of a Bath hotel, talking about his voyages, and explaining, with enthusiasm, how he loved the sea.

“Good sailor!” he replied in answer to a young man’s envious question; “well, I did feel a little queer once, I confess. It was off Cape Horn. The vessel was wrecked the next morning.”

I said:

“Weren’t you a little shaky by Southend Pier one day, and wanted to be thrown overboard?”

“Southend Pier!” he replied, with a puzzled expression.

“Yes; going down to Yarmouth, last Friday three weeks.”

“Oh, ah – yes,” he answered, brightening up; “I remember now. I did have a headache that afternoon. It was the food, you know. It was the most disgraceful food I ever tasted in a respectable boat. Did you have any?”

For myself, I have discovered an excellent remedy against sea-sickness, in balancing myself. You stand in the centre of the deck, and, as the ship goes up and down, you move your body about, so as to keep it always straight. When the front of the ship rises, you lean forward, till the deck almost touches your nose;

and when its back end gets up, you lean backwards. This is all very well for an hour or two; but you can’t balance yourself for a week.

George said: “Let’s go up the river.”

He said we should have fresh air, exercise and quiet, and the hard work would give us a good appetite, and make us sleep well.

Harris and I both said it was a good idea of George’s. The only one who wasn’t inspired with the suggestion was Montmorency. He never did care for the river.

“It’s all very well for you fellows,” he says; “you like it, but I don’t. There’s nothing for me to do. I don’t admire sceneries, and I don’t smoke. If I see a rat, you won’t stop; and if I go to sleep, you get fooling about with the boat, and let me fall overboard. If you ask me, I call the whole thing incredible foolishness.”

We were three to one, however, and the decision was made¹³.

Exercises

1. Read the chapter and mark the sentences T (true), F (false) or NI (no information).

1. All the friends were feeling well.

2. The only disease the narrator had not got as he believed was cholera.

3. The narrator tried to examine himself.

4. The doctor gave the narrator the prescription which he followed.

5. The supper was not tasty.

6. Harris objected to the sea trip strongly.

7. One of the narrator’s friends paid two pounds five for his food in a sea trip and that was a waste of money.

8. The narrator was against the sea trip because of a sea-sickness he had.

9. People who are sea-sick always confirm it when they are on the shore.

10. Montmorency wasn’t inspired by the idea to travel up the river.

2. Learn the words from the text:

extraordinary, leaflet, suffer, treatment, disease, complication, crawl, prescription, necessity, swallow, faint, fancy, reduction, odour, broth, gaze, puzzled, disgraceful, remedy, recollect.

3. Practice the pronunciation of the following words.

4. Fill in the gaps using the words from the text.

1. With me, it was my liver that was … of order.

2. I sat and … it over.

3. As a boy, the disease … ever left me for a day.

4. We sat there for half-an-hour, describing to … … our diseases.

5. Lunch was at one, and … … four courses.

6. … the beef … the strawberries and cream seemed happy, either – seemed discontented like.

7. Harris said that he … never … able to get sick at sea.

8. I met him in the coffee-room of a Bath hotel, … about his voyages.

9. The hard work would give us a good appetite, and … us sleep well.

10. If I … a rat, you won’t stop.

5. Match the words with definitions.

6. Find in the text the English equivalents for:

приступы головокружения, сделать вывод, серьезные осложнения, с точки зрения медицины, нащупать пульс, следовать указаниям, состояние здоровья, огромная скидка, приятный аромат, состоящий из четырех блюд, делать что-то нарочно, восхищаться пейзажем.

7. Find the words in the text for which the following are synonyms:

remedy, recollect, sea trip, gaze, to be against, ordinary, disease, begin, main, in the present instance.

8. Explain and expand on the following.

1. I was a hospital in myself.

2. I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a weak wreck.

3. My parents did not know, then, that it was my liver and they used to put it down to laziness.

4. If you want rest and change, you can’t beat a sea trip.

5. A sea trip does you good when you are going to have a couple of months of it, but, for a week, it is wicked.

6. It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick – on land.

7. When the front of the ship rises, you lean forward, till the deck almost touches your nose; and when its back end gets up, you lean backwards.

8. The only one who wasn’t inspired with the suggestion was Montmorency.

9. Answer the following questions.

1. How many people are there in the room? Why are they “bad”?

2. How does the narrator know about his illness?

3. Why is the narrator a good gift for a medical class?

4. Where does the narrator go after visiting the library? Why?

5. Can the chemist help the narrator? Why / why not?

6. What is the general symptom of the narrator’s disease? How did his relatives help him to cure the disease in his childhood?

7. What remedy do the friends find to cure their diseases?

8. Why is the narrator against a sea trip?

9. Who isn’t inspired by the common decision to go up the river? Why?

10. Who is Montmorency?

10. Retell the chapter for the persons of Harris, the doctor, the narrator’s brother-in-law, Montmorency.

CHAPTER II

We pulled out the maps, and discussed plans. We arranged to start next Saturday from Kingston. Harris and I would go down the river in the morning, and take the boat up to Chertsey, and George, who would not be able to get away from the City till the afternoon (George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two), would meet us there.

Should we “camp out” or sleep at inns? George and I were for camping out. We said it would be so wild and free.

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like disappointed children, the birds have stopped their song. From the dim woods on the both banks, Night’s ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless steps; and Night, upon her gloomy throne, spreads her black wings¹⁴ above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in calmness.

Then we run our little boat into some quiet bay, and the tent is set up, and the supper cooked and eaten. Then the big pipes are filled and lighted, and the pleasant chat goes round like quiet music; while, in the pauses of our talk, the river, playing round the boat, whispers strange old tales and secrets, sings low the old child’s song that it has sung so many thousand years – will sing so many thousand years to come, before its voice grows harsh and old – a song that we think, somehow, we understand.

And we sit there, by its bank, while the moon, who loves it too, bends down to kiss it with a sister’s kiss, and throws her silver arms around it¹⁵; and we watch it as it flows, ever singing, ever whispering, out to meet its king, the sea – till our voices die away in silence, and the pipes go out – till we, common, everyday young men enough, feel strangely full of thoughts, half sad, half sweet, and do not care or want to speak – till we laugh, and, rising, knock the ashes from our burnt-out pipes, and say “Good-night,” and, lulled by the splashing water and the rustling trees¹⁶, we fall asleep under the great, still stars, and dream that the world is young again.

Harris said: “How about when it rained?”

You can never inspire Harris. There is no poetry about Harris. Harris never “cries, he knows not why.” If Harris’s eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester¹⁷ over his chop.

If you were to¹⁸ stand at night by the sea-shore with Harris, and say:

“Listen! Do you not hear? Is it but the mermaids singing deep below the waving waters; or sad spirits?” Harris would take you by the arm, and say:

“I know what it is, old man; you’ve got a cold. Now, you come along with me. I know a place round the corner here, where you can get a drop of the finest Scotch whisky you ever tasted – put you right in less than no time.”

Harris always knows a place round the corner where you can get something brilliant in the drinking line. I believe that if you met Harris up in Paradise (supposing such a thing likely), he would immediately greet you with:

“So glad you’ve come, old fellow; I’ve found a nice place round the corner here, where you can get some really first-class nectar.”

In the present instance, however, as for the camping out, his practical view of the matter was just in time. Camping out in rainy weather is not pleasant. It is evening. You are wet through, and there is a good two inches¹⁹ of water in the boat, and all the things are damp. You find a place on the banks that is not quite so wet as other places you have seen, and you land, and two of you start to fix the tent.

It is wet and heavy, and it flops about, and falls down on you, and clings round your head and makes you 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 extremely difficult. Instead of helping you, it seems to you that the other man is simply playing the fool²⁰. Just as you get your side beautifully fixed, he lifts it from his end, and spoils it all.

“Here! what are you up to²¹?” you call out.

“What are you up to?” he objects; “let it go, can’t you?”

“Don’t pull it; you’ve got it all wrong, you stupid fool!” you shout.

“No, I haven’t,” he yells back; “let go your side!”

“I tell you you’ve got it all wrong!” you roar, wishing that you could get at him; and you pull your ropes that all his pegs are out.

“Ah, the idiot!” you hear him mutter to himself; and then comes a savage haul, and your side goes away. You start to go round and tell him what you think about the whole business, and, at the same time, he starts round in the same direction to come and explain his views to you. And you follow each other round and round, swearing at one another, until the tent falls down, and leaves you looking at each other across its ruins, when you both indignantly exclaim, in the same breath:

“There you are! What did I tell you?”

Meanwhile the third man, who has been baling out²² the boat, and who has spilled the water down his sleeve, and has been cursing away to himself steadily for the last ten minutes, wants to know why the tent isn’t up yet.

At last, somehow or other, it does get up, and you land the things. It is hopeless attempting to make a wood fire, so you light the methylated spirit stove²³, and crowd round that.

Rainwater is the chief component of diet at supper. The bread is two-thirds rainwater, the beefsteak-pie is extremely rich in it, and the jam, and the butter, and the salt, and the coffee have all combined with it to make soup. After supper, you find your tobacco is damp, and you cannot smoke. Luckily you have a bottle of the stuff that cheers, if taken in right quantity, and you go to bed.

There you dream that an elephant has suddenly sat down on your chest, and that the volcano has exploded and thrown you down to the bottom of the sea – the elephant still sleeping peacefully on your chest. You wake up and realize that something terrible really has happened. Your first impression is that the end of the world has come; and then you think that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers, or else fire, and this opinion you express in the usual method. No help comes, however, and all you know is that thousands of people are kicking you, and you are being suffocated.

Somebody else seems in trouble, too. You can hear his faint cries coming from underneath your bed. Being determined to sell your life expensively, you fight, hitting out right and left with arms and legs, and yelling, and at last something gives way, and you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off²⁴, you see a half-dressed hooligan, waiting to kill you, and you are preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when you realize that it’s Jim.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he says, recognizing you at the same moment.

“Yes,” you answer, rubbing your eyes; “what’s happened?”

“The tent’s blown down, I think,” he says. “Where’s Bill?”

Then you both raise up your voices and shout for “Bill!” and the ground beneath you heaves, and the faint voice that you heard before replies from out the ruin:

“Get off my head, can’t you?”

And Bill struggles out in an aggressive mood – he believes that the whole thing has been done on purpose.

In the morning you are all three speechless, having to catch severe colds at night; you also feel very quarrelsome, and you swear at each other in hoarse whispers during the whole of breakfast time.

We therefore decided that we would sleep out at fine nights and in hotel, or inn, like respectable people, when it was wet, or when we wanted a change.

Montmorency greeted this compromise with much approval. He does not enjoy romantic loneliness. To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason in the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-so-mething-to-make-it-better-and-nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the tears into the eyes of old ladies and gentlemen.

When first he came to live at my expense²⁵, I never thought I should be able to get him to stop long²⁶. I used to sit down and look at him, as he sat on the rug and looked up at me, and think: “Oh, that dog will never live. He will be taken to the bright skies that is what will happen to him.” But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had killed; and had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruff of his neck, out of a hundred and fourteen street fights; and an angry woman, who called me a murderer, had brought me a dead cat, then I began to think that maybe they’d let him remain on earth for a bit longer, after all.

Having thus settled the sleeping arrangements to the satisfaction of all four of us, the only thing left to discuss²⁷ was what we should take with us; and this we had begun to argue, when Harris said he’d had enough oratory for one night, and proposed that we should go out and have a smile²⁸, saying that he had found a place, round by the square, where you could really get a drop of Irish worth drinking.

George said he felt thirsty (I never knew George when he didn’t); and the debate was, by common agreement, postponed till the following night; and the assembly put on its hats and went out.

Exercises

1. Read the chapter and choose the correct answer.

1. The friends arranged to start

a) next Sunday.

b) next Saturday.

с) next Monday.

2. You can a) never ignore Harris.

b) always inspire Harris.

с) never inspire Harris.

3. Harris always knows a place round the corner where

a) you can get something to drink.

b) you can get some nectar.

с) to eat properly.

4. Camping out in rainy weather is

a) not pleasant.

b) nice and pleasant.

с) wet and damp.

5. To fix a tent in rainy weather is

a) difficult enough.

b) easy enough.

с) extremely difficult.

6. The chief component of diet at supper is

a) bread and butter.

b) rainwater.

с) soup.

7. The friends decided to sleep out

a) at fine nights.

b) when it was wet.

с) when they wanted a change.

8. Montmorency

a) disapproved the compromise.

b) was against the compromise.

с) greeted the compromise with approval.

9. Montmorency looked like

a) a small fox-terrier.

b) a murderer.

с) an angel.

10. The only thing left to discuss was

a) where to sleep.

b) what to take.

с) what to do.

2. Learn the words from the text:

damp, pour, spoil, savage, exclaim, approval, propose, attempt (v), struggle, calmness, arrange, postpone, meanwhile, roar, steadily, swear, quantity, proper, whisper, crowd.

3. Practice the pronunciation of the following words.

4. Fill in the gaps using the words from the text.

1. George would not … … to get away from the City till the afternoon.

2. The tent is … … and the supper … and … .

3. If Harris’s eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris … … … raw onions.

4. Harris always … a place … the corner.

5. The rain … … steadily down all the time.

6. You wake up and … that something terrible real -ly … … .

7. And Bill struggles out in an aggressive … – he believes that the whole thing has been done on … .

8. Montmorency … … enjoy romantic loneliness.

9. I … to sit down and look at him, as he … on the rug and … up at me.

10. Harris proposed that we … go out.

5. Match the words with definitions.

6. Find in the text the English equivalents for:

стряхнуть пепел, простудиться, сводить с ума, лить как из ведра (о дожде), все испортить, в то же время, на одном дыхании, пролить воду, морское дно, по какой-то причине, битва не на жизнь, а на смерть, пролить воду.

7. Find the words in the text for which the following are synonyms:

suggest, gloomy, struggle, everyday, curse, peaceful, realize, arrange, inn, meanwhile.

8. Explain and expand on the following.

1. George would not be able to get away from the City till the afternoon.

2. George and I were for camping out.

3. You can never inspire Harris.

4. Camping out in rainy weather is not pleasant.

5. Rainwater is the chief component of diet at supper.

6. You wake up and realize that something terrible really has happened.

7. To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon the earth.

8. Harris said he’d had enough oratory for one night.

9. Answer the following questions.

1. Why do the friends start without Gorge? Will he go with them?

2. What do George and the narrator call “wild and free”? Why?

3. Is it possible to inspire Harris? Give an example.

4. Is camping out pleasant in rainy weather? Why / why not?

5. Is it difficult to fix a tent?

6. What does your supper consist of when camping out in rainy weather?

7. What decision did the friends make?

8. Why does Montmorency look like an angel?

9. What does the narrator think about Montmorency’s staying on earth?

10. What was the last thing to discuss? Did the friends discuss it?

10. Retell the chapter for the persons of the narrator, Harris, George, Montmorency.

CHAPTER III

So, on the following evening, we again assembled, to discuss and arrange our plans.

Harris said:

“Now, the first thing to settle is what to take with us. Now, you get a bit of paper and write down, J., and you get the grocery catalogue, George, and somebody give me a bit of pencil, and then I’ll make out a list.”

That’s Harris all over²⁹ – so ready to take the burden of everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people.

He always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger. You never saw such an agitation in a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would³⁰ have come home 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, you 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 nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually start the whole house³¹.

“Now you go and get me my hammer, Will,” he would shout; “and you bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the step-ladder, and I had better have a kitchen-chair, too; and, Jim! you 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 you 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, you come here; I shall want you 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 run round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coat 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 coat is? Six of you! – and you can’t find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago!”

Then he’d get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call out:

“Oh, you can give it up! I’ve found it myself now. You might as well ask the cat to find anything as expect you people to find it.”

And, when half an hour 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 housemaid, 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 look 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 by that time he would have lost the hammer.

“Where’s the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great heavens! Seven of you, being round there, and you don’t know what I did with the hammer!”

We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lost sight³² 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.

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, next 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! you women, you make such a fuss³³ over everything,” Uncle Podger would reply. “Why, I like doing a little job of this sort.”

And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow, the nail would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it. 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, and everybody dead beat and wretched³⁴ – except Uncle Podger.

“There you are,” he would say, stepping heavily off the chair 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!”

Harris will be just that sort of man when he grows up, I know, and I told him so. I said I could not permit him to take so much labour upon himself.

I said:

“No; you get the paper, and the pencil, and the catalogue, and George write down, and I’ll do the work.”

The first list we made out had to be torn up. It was clear that the Thames would not allow of the navigation of a boat large enough to take the things we had written down.

George said:

“You know we are on a wrong way altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without³⁵.”

George comes out really sensible at times. You’d be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not just as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

How they pile the poor little boat with fine clothes and big houses; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence, and with – oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! – the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries, with pleasures that bore.

It is lumber, man – all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly can’t row. It makes it so heavy and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment’s rest for dreamy laziness.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so likely to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset. You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life’s sunshine – time to listen to the Aeolian music³⁶ that the wind of God draws from the human heart-strings around us – time to – I beg your pardon, really. I quite forgot.

Well, we left the list to George, and he began it.

“We won’t take a tent,” suggested George; “we will have a boat with a cover. It is ever so much simpler, and more comfortable.”

It seemed a good thought, and we adopted it. I do not know whether you have ever seen the thing I mean. You fix iron hoops up over the boat, and stretch a huge canvas over them, and fasten it down all round, and it converts the boat into a sort of little house, and it is beautifully cosy, though a bit stuffy; but there, everything has its disadvantages, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.

George said that in that case we must take a rug each, a lamp, some soap, a brush and comb (between us), a toothbrush (each), a basin, some tooth-powder, some shaving tackle, and a couple of big-towels for bathing. I notice that people always make gigantic arrangements for bathing when they are going anywhere near the water, but that they don’t bathe much when they are there.

It is the same when you go to the sea-side. I always determine – when thinking over the matter in London – that I’ll get up early every morning, and go and swim before breakfast, and I religiously pack up a pair of drawers and a bath towel. I always get red bathing drawers. I rather fancy myself in red drawers. They suit my complexion so. But when I get to the sea I don’t feel somehow that I want that early morning bathe nearly so much as I did when I was in town.

On the contrary, I feel more that I want to stop in bed till the last moment, and then come down and have my breakfast. Once or twice I have got out at six and half-dressed myself, and have taken my drawers and towel, and started dismally off. But I haven’t enjoyed it. They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind, waiting for me, when I go to bathe in the early morning; and they pick out all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and they sharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so that I can’t see them, and they take the sea and put it two miles out, so that I have to huddle myself up³⁷ in my arms and hop, shivering, through six inches of water. And when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quite insulting.

One huge wave catches me up and throws me in a sitting posture, as hard as ever it can, down on to a rock which has been put there for me. And, before I’ve said “Oh! Ugh!” and found out what has gone, the wave comes back and carries me out to mid-ocean. I begin to strike out for³⁸ the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see home and friends again, and wish I’d been kinder to my little sister when a boy (when I was a boy, I mean). Just when I have given up all hope, a wave retires and leaves me sprawling like a star-fish on the sand, and I get up and look back and find that I’ve been swimming for my life in two feet of water. I hop back and dress, and crawl home, where I have to pretend I liked it.

In the present instance, we all talked as if we were going to have a long swim every morning.

George said it was so pleasant to wake up in the boat in the fresh morning, and dive into the clear river. Harris said there was nothing like a swim before breakfast to give you an appetite. He said it always gave him an appetite. George said that if it was going to make Harris eat more than Harris ordinarily ate, then he should protest against Harris having a bath at all.

He said there would be quite enough hard work in pulling sufficient food for Harris up against stream, as it was.

I urged upon George³⁹, however, how much pleasanter it would be to have Harris clean and fresh about the boat, even if we did have to take a few more hundredweight⁴⁰ of provisions; and he got to see it in my light, and withdrew his opposition to Harris’s bath.

Agreed, finally, that we should take three bath towels, so as not to keep each other waiting.

For clothes, George said two suits of flannel would be sufficient, as we could wash them ourselves, in the river, when they got dirty. We asked him if he had ever tried washing flannels in the river, and he replied: “No, not exactly himself like; but he knew some fellows who had, and it was easy enough;” and Harris and I could hardly believe he knew what he was talking about, and that three respectable young men, without position or influence, and with no experience in washing, could really clean their own shirts and trousers in the river Thames with a bit of soap.

We were to learn in the days to come, when it was too late, that George was a miserable liar, who could evidently have known nothing about the matter. If you had seen these clothes after – but, as the shilling shockers⁴¹ say, we anticipate.

Georgу suggested taking a change of underwear and plenty of socks, in case we got upset and wanted a change; also plenty of handkerchiefs, as they would do to wipe things, and a pair of leather boots as well as our boating shoes, as we should want them if we got upset.

Exercises

1. Read the chapter and mark the sentences T (true), F (false) or NI (no information).

1. The first thing to settle was what to buy.

2. Harris looks like Uncle Podger.

3. George reminds the narrator of his Uncle Podger.

4. Uncle Podger needs help of his whole family to hang a picture.

5. The first list three friends made was all right.

6. People often load their boats of life with foolish things.

7. The friends decided to take a tent.

8. The narrator likes bathing.

9. George would like to dive in the morning.

10. Some fellows would wash friends’ flannel suits in the river.

2. Learn the words from the text:

agitation, nail, gradually, hammer, handkerchief, tool, grunt, thumb, toe, permit, sensible, wisdom, fasten, canvas, disadvantage, towel, evident, sufficient, remind, injured.

3. Practice the pronunciation of the following words.

4. Fill in the gaps using the words from the text.

1. Now, you get a bit of paper and write …, J., and somebody give me a bit of pencil, and then I … make out a list.

2. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coat he … … off, and he did not know where he … put the coat.

3. Two people … have to hold the chair, and a third … help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth … hand him a nail, and a fifth … pass him up the hammer, and he … take hold of the nail, and drop it.

4. Harris … be just that sort of man when he … up.

5. We must not think of the things we could do …, but only of the things that we can’t do … .

6. I … your pardon, really. I … forgot.

7. We will have a boat with a cover. It is ever so much …, and … comfortable.

8. I … not know whether you … ever … the thing I mean.

9. One huge wave catches me up and … me in a sitting posture, … hard … ever it can, down on to a rock which … … put there for me.

10. Harris said there … nothing … a swim before breakfast to give you an appetite. He said it always … him an appetite.

5. Match the words with definitions.

6. Find in the text the English equivalents for:

на следующий вечер, листок бумаги, сказать обиженным тоном, потерять из виду, поднимать шум, вовремя, записать, обходиться без чего-либо, бесполезный хлам, выбрасывать за борт, забегать вперед, на случай если.

7. Find the words in the text for which the following are synonyms:

next, arrange, begin, yell, hand (v), keep, beside, permit, fear, bathe.

8. Explain and expand on the following.

1. That’s Harris all over – so ready to take the burden of everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people.

2. Harris always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger.

3. Uncle Podger would gradually start the whole house.

4. The first list we made out had to be torn up.

5. Throw the lumber over, man!

6. “We won’t take a tent,” suggested George.

7. I notice that people always make gigantic arrangements for bathing.

8. George said two suits of flannel would be sufficient.

9. Answer the following questions.

1. Who reminds of Uncle Podger? Why?

2. Does Uncle Podger need any help? What help does he need?

3. Why was the first list of things torn up?

4. What does the narrator say about our “boats of life”? What does he mean?

5. How will the friends manage to travel without a tent?

6. Does the narrator swim much when he goes to the sea-side? Why / why not?

7. Who protests against Harris having a bath? Why?

8. Why did George withdraw his opposition?

9. Why would two suits of flannel be sufficient?

10. What set of things did the friends decide to take?

10. Retell the chapter for the persons of the narrator, George, Uncle Podger, Aunt Maria.

CHAPTER IV

Then we discussed the food question. George said:

“Begin with breakfast.” (George is so practical.) “Now for breakfast we shall want a frying pan” – (Harris said it was indigestible) – “a tea-pot and a kettle, and a methylated spirit stove.”

“No oil,” said George, with a significant look; and Harris and I agreed.

We had taken up an oil-stove once, but “never again.” It had been like living in an oil-shop that week. It oozed. We kept it in the nose of the boat, and, from there, it oozed down, filling up the whole boat and everything in it on its way, and it oozed over the river, and saturated the scenery and spoilt the atmosphere. Sometimes a westerly oily wind blew, and at other times an easterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a northerly oily wind, and maybe a southerly oily wind. At the end of that trip we met together at midnight in a lonely field, under an oak, and took an awful oath never to take paraffine oil with us in a boat again. Therefore, in the present instance, we agreed on methylated spirit. Even that is bad enough. You get methylated pie and methylated cake.

For other breakfast things, George suggested eggs and bacon, which were easy to cook, cold meat, tea, bread and butter, and jam. For lunch, he said, we could have biscuits, cold meat, bread and butter, and jam – but no cheese. Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself.⁴² It wants the whole boat to itself. It gives a cheesy flavour to everything else there. You can’t tell whether you are eating apple-pie or German sausage, or strawberries and cream. It all seems cheese. There is too much odour about cheese.

I remember a friend of mine, buying a couple of cheeses at Liverpool. Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a strong scent about them that might have knocked a man over at two hundred yards⁴³. I was in Liverpool at the time, and my friend asked me to take them to London.

“Oh, with pleasure, dear boy,” I replied, “with pleasure.”

I called for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab. The cab was very old, dragged along by a sick somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment of enthusiasm, during conversation, called a horse. I put the cheeses on the top, and we started off and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we turned the corner. There, the wind carried a whiff from the cheeses on to our horse. It woke him up, and, with a snort of terror, he dashed off at three miles an hour. It took two porters as well as the driver to hold him in at the station; and I do not think they would have done it, if one of the men hadn’t put a handkerchief over the horse’s nose, and lit a bit of brown paper.

I took my ticket, and marched proudly up the platform, with my cheeses, the people falling back respectfully on either side. The train was crowded, and I had to get into a carriage where there were already seven other people. One grumpy old gentleman objected, but I got in; and, putting my cheeses upon the shelf, squeezed down with a pleasant smile, and said it was a warm day.

A few moments passed, and then the old gentleman began to fidget.

“Very close in here,” he said.

“Quite oppressive,”⁴⁴ said the man next to him.

And then they both began sniffing, and, at the third sniff, they caught it right on the chest, and rose up without another word and went out. And then a plump lady got up, and said it was disgraceful that a respectable married woman should be treated in this way, and gathered up a bag and eight parcels and went. Then the other three passengers tried to get out of the door at the same time, and hurt themselves.

I smiled at the black gentleman, and said I thought we were going to have the carriage to ourselves; and he laughed pleasantly, and said that some people made such a fuss over a little thing. But even he grew strangely depressed after we had started, and so, when we reached Crewe, I asked him to come and have a drink. He accepted, and we forced our way into the buffet, where we yelled, and stamped, and waved our umbrellas for a quarter of an hour; and then a young lady came, and asked us if we wanted anything.

“What would you like to drink?” I said, turning to my friend.

“I’ll have half-a-crown’s worth of brandy, neat, if you please, miss,⁴⁵” he responded.

And he went off quietly after he had drunk it and got into another carriage, which I thought mean.

From Crewe I had the compartment to myself, though the train was crowded. As we drew up at the different stations, the people, seeing my empty carriage, would rush for it. “Here you are, Maria; come along, plenty of room.” “All right, Tom; we’ll get in here,” they would shout. And they would run along, carrying heavy bags, and fight round the door to get in first. And one would open the door and mount the steps, and fall back into the arms of the man behind him; and they would all come and have a sniff, and then go away and squeeze into other carriages, or pay the difference and go first⁴⁶.

From Euston, I took the cheeses down to my friend’s house. When his wife came into the room she smelt round for an instant. Then she said:

“What is it? Tell me the worst.”

I said:

“It’s cheeses. Tom bought them in Liverpool, and asked me to bring them up with me.”

And I added that I hoped she understood that it had nothing to do with me; and she said that she was sure of that, but that she would speak to Tom about it when he came back.

My friend was detained in Liverpool longer than he expected; and, three days later, as he hadn’t returned home, his wife called on me. She said:

“What did Tom say about those cheeses?”

I replied that he had directed they were to be kept in a moist place, and that nobody was to touch them.

She said:

“Nobody’s likely to touch them. Had he smelt them?”

I thought he had, and added that he seemed greatly attached to them.

“You think he would be upset,” she asked, “if I gave a man a sovereign⁴⁷ to take them away and bury them?”

I answered that I thought he would never smile again. An idea struck her. She said:

“Do you mind keeping them for him? Let me send them round to you.”

“Madam,” I replied, “for myself I like the smell of cheese, and the journey the other day with them from Liverpool I shall ever look back upon as a happy ending to a pleasant holiday. But, in this world, we must consider others. The lady under whose roof I have the hon-our of living is a widow, and, for all I know, possibly an orphan too. She has a strong objection to being what she terms ‘put upon⁴⁸.’ The presence of your husband’s cheeses in her house she would, I instinctively feel, regard as a ‘put upon’; and it shall never be said that I put upon the widow and the orphan.”

“Very well, then,” said my friend’s wife, rising, “all I have to say is, that I shall take the children and go to a hotel until those cheeses are eaten. I refuse to live any longer in the same house with them.”

She kept her word, leaving the place in charge of the housemaid, who, when asked if she could stand the smell, replied, “What smell?” and who, when taken close to the cheeses and told to sniff hard, said she could detect a faint odour of melons.

The hotel bill came to fifteen guineas⁴⁹; and my friend, after thinking everything over, found that the cheeses had cost him eight-and-sixpence a pound. He said he dearly loved a bit of cheese, but it was beyond his means⁵⁰; so he determined to get rid of them. He threw them into the canal; but had to fish them out again, as the bargemen complained. They said it made them feel quite sick. And, after that, he took them one dark night and left them in the parish morgue. But the coroner discovered them, and said it was a plot to deprive him of his living⁵¹ by waking up the corpses. My friend got rid of them, at last, by taking them down to a sea-side town, and burying them on the beach.

Fond as I am of cheese, therefore, I considered that George was right in declining to take any.

“We shan’t⁵² want any tea,” said George (Harris’s face fell at this); “but we’ll have a good round, square, fabulous meal at seven – dinner, tea, and supper combined.”

Harris grew more cheerful. George suggested meat and fruit pies, cold meat, tomatoes, fruit, and green stuff. For drink, we took some wonderful sticky mixture of Harris’s, in which you added some water and called it lemonade, plenty of tea, and a bottle of whisky, in case, as George said, we got upset.

We didn’t take beer or wine. They are a mistake up the river. They make you feel sleepy and heavy. A glass in the evening when you are wandering round the town and looking at the girls is all right enough; but don’t drink when the sun is blazing down on your head, and you’ve got hard work to do.

We made a list of the things to be taken, and a pretty lengthy one it was. The next day, which was Friday, we got them all together, and met in the evening to pack. We moved the table up against the window, piled everything in a heap in the middle of the floor, and sat round and looked at it.

I said I’d pack.

I rather pride myself on my packing. Packing is one of those many things that I feel I know more about than any other person living. I impressed the fact upon George and Harris, and told them that they had better leave the whole matter entirely to me. They fell into the suggestion with a readiness. George put on a pipe and spread himself over the armchair, and Harris put his legs on the table and lit a cigar.

This was hardly what I intended. What I had meant, of course, was, that I should boss the job, and that Harris and George should potter about under my directions, I pushing them aside every now and then with, “Oh, you —!” “Here, let me do it.” “There you are, simple enough!” – really teaching them, as you might say. Their taking it in the way they did irritated me. Nothing irritates me more than seeing other people sitting about doing nothing when I’m working. I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can’t help it.

However, 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.

“Aren’t you going to put the boots in?” said Harris. And I looked round, and found I had forgotten them. That’s just like Harris. He couldn’t have said a word until I’d got the bag shut and strapped, of course. And George laughed – one of those irritating, senseless 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, and get out of bed 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 single thing out now, and, of course, I could not find it. 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 by 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 said I didn’t care whether the soap was in or whether it wasn’t; and I slammed the bag and strapped it, and found that I had packed my tobacco-pouch⁵³ in it, and had to re-open it. It got shut up finally at 10.50 p.m., and then there remained the hampers to do. Harris said 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 show me how to do it. I made no comment; I only waited. Harris is 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, etc., 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 show you what they could do, and to get you interested. Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomato with a teaspoon.

And then it was George’s turn, and he stepped on the butter. I didn’t say anything, but I came over and sat on the edge of the table and watched them. It irritated them more 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! 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,” said George, staring at the empty seat.

“I saw you do it myself, not a minute ago,” said 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,” said George.

“So mysterious!” said 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, turning 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.⁵⁴ If he can be anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day 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 egotism 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 or 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 calm him with the frying pan.

The packing was done at 12.50; and Harris sat on the big hamper, and said he hoped nothing is broken. George said he was ready for bed. We were all ready for bed. Harris was to sleep with us that night, and we went upstairs.

We tossed for beds, and Harris had to sleep with me. He said:

“Do you prefer the inside or the outside, J.?”

I said I generally preferred to sleep inside a bed.

Harris said it was old.

George said:

“What time shall I wake you fellows?”

Harris said:

“Seven.”

I said:

“No – six,” because I wanted to write some letters.

Harris and I had a bit of a row over it, but at last split the difference, and said half-past six.

“Wake us at 6.30, George,” we said.

George made no answer, and we found that he had been asleep for some time; so we placed the bath where he could fall into it on getting out in the morning, and went to bed ourselves.

Exercises

1. Read the chapter and choose the correct answer.

1. The friends decided not to take

a) a methylated spirit stove.

b) an oil stove.

c) a frying pan.

2. The friend were against any cheese because

a) they don’t like cheese.

b) George suggested eggs and bacon.

c) it smells too strong.

3. People, seeing the narrator’s empty carriage, would

a) go into another carriage.

b) stay at the station.

c) rush for it.

4. Tom’s wife wanted to

a) eat the cheeses.

b) bury the cheeses.

c) keep the cheeses in a moist place.

5. In case the friends got upset they took

a) a bottle of whisky.

b) some lemonade.

c) beer and wine.

6. The thing that haunts the narrator when he is travelling is

a) his boots.

b) packing.

c) his tooth-brush.

7. The narrator finally shut the bag at

a) 10.00.

b) 10.15.

c) 10.50.

8. George and Harris started packing with

a) squashing a tomato.

b) breaking a cup.

c) stepping on things.

9. Montmorency pretended that

a) the lemons were rats.

b) Harris could calm him.

c) he was helping with packing.

10. The friends agreed to wake up at

a) 6.00.

b) 6.30.

c) 7.00.

2. Learn the words from the text:

significant, scenery, reply, scent, grumpy, compartment, consider, widow, orphan, wander, strap, occur, pretend, waste, aim, accomplish, unbearable, exclaim, crowded, attached.

3. Practice the pronunciation of the following words.

4. Fill in the gaps using the words from the text.

1. You can’t tell … you are … apple-pie or German sausage, or strawberries and cream. It all … cheese.

2. I … not think they would … … it, if one of the men … put a handkerchief over the horse’s nose.

3. She said that she … sure of that, but that she … speak to Tom about it when he … back.

4. I replied that he … directed they were to … … in a moist place.

5. I … take the children and go to a hotel until those cheeses … … .

6. My friend, after … everything …, found that the cheeses … … him eight-and-sixpence a pound.

7. I impressed the fact upon George and Harris, and told them that they … … leave the whole matter entirely to me.

8. If he can … anywhere where he particularly … not wanted, and … people mad, and … things thrown at his head, then he … his day … not been … .

9. The packing … … at 12.50.

10. George made no answer, and we found that he … … asleep for some time.

5. Match the words with definitions.

6. Find in the text the English equivalents for:

один мой друг, многозначительный взгляд, в конце поездки, переполненный поезд, быть сильно привязанным к чему-то, бродить по городу, что касается, сводить с ума, едва уловимый запах, протянуть руку, сделать все остальное, заинтересовать кого-то.

7. Find the words in the text for which the following are synonyms:

pretty, decline, regard, plenty, odour, whether, ambition, labour, reply, intend.

8. Explain and expand on the following.

1. We had taken up an oil-stove once, but “never again.”

2. Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself.

3. My friend got rid of the cheeses by burying them on the beach.

4. I said I’d pack.

5. My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I’m travelling.

6. Harris is the worst packer in this world.

7. Montmorency was in it all, of course.

8. What time shall I wake you fellows?

9. Answer the following questions.

1. Why did the friends take an awful oath never to take paraffine oil with them in a boat again?

2. What did George refuse to take for breakfast? Why?

3. What happened with the horse that carried the cheeses?

4. How did the people who travelled with the narrator behave? Why?

5. Did Tom’s wife like the cheese? Why / why not?

6. How did Tom get rid of the cheeses?

7. Was the narrator successful at packing?

8. Why does the narrator say that his tooth-brush haunts him?

9. Did George and Harris manage to do the packing? Was it easy?

10. What was Montmorency doing during the packing?

10. Retell the chapter for the persons of the narrator, Tom, Tom’s wife, George, Harris.

CHAPTER V

It was Mrs. Poppets that woke me up next morning. She said:

“Do you know that it’s nearly nine o’clock, sir?”

“Nine o’ what?” I cried, starting up.

“Nine o’clock,” she replied, through the keyhole. “I thought you were oversleeping.”

I woke Harris, and told him. He said:

“I thought you wanted to get up at six?”

“So I did,” I answered; “why didn’t you wake me?” “How could I wake you, when you didn’t wake me?” he responded. “Now we shan’t get on the water till after twelve. I wonder you take the trouble to get up at all.”

“Um,” I replied, “lucky for you that I do. If I hadn’t woken you, you’d have lain there for the whole fortnight.”

We were growling at one another for the next few minutes, when we were interrupted by a snore from George. It reminded us of his existence. There he lay – the man who had wanted to know what time he should wake us – on his back, with his mouth wide open, and his knees stuck up.

I don’t know why it should be, but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, makes me mad. It seems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of a man’s life – the priceless moments that will never come back to him again – being wasted in mere brutish sleep. There was George, throwing away the inestimable gift of time. He might have been up stuffing himself with eggs and bacon or irritating the dog instead of sprawling there.

It was a terrible thought. Harris and I seemed to be struck by it at the same instant. We determined to save him, and our own dispute was forgotten. We rushed to him and pull his blanket off him, and Harris hit him with a slipper, and I shouted in his ear, and he awoke.

“Wasermarrer?⁵⁵” he observed, sitting up.

“Get up, you fat-headed chunk!⁵⁶” roared Harris. “It’s quarter to ten.”

“What!” he exclaimed, jumping out of bed into the bath; “Who put this thing here?”

We told him he must have been a fool not to see the bath. We finished dressing, and, when it came to the other procedures, we remembered that we had packed the tooth-brushes and the brush and comb (that toothbrush of mine will be the death of me⁵⁷, I know), and we had to go downstairs, and fish them out of the bag. And when we had done that George wanted the shaving tackle. We told him that he would have to go without shaving that morning, as we weren’t going to unpack that bag again for him, nor for anyone like him.

We went downstairs to have breakfast. Montmorency had invited two other dogs to come and see him, and they were whiling away the time⁵⁸ by fighting on the doorstep. We calmed them with an umbrella, and sat down to chops and cold beef.

Harris said:

“The great thing is to make a good breakfast,” and he started with a couple of chops, saying that he would take these while they were hot, as the beef could wait.

George got hold of the newspaper, and read us out the boating fatalities, and the weather forecast, which predicted “rain, cold, wet to fine⁵⁹” (the worst thing that may be in weather), “occasional local thunderstorms, east wind.”

I do think that, of all the silly, irritating nonsense by which we are ill, this “weather-forecast” fraud is about the most annoying. It “forecasts” precisely what happened yesterday or the day before, and precisely the opposite of what is going to happen today.

I remember a holiday of mine being completely ruined one late autumn by our paying attention to the weather report of the local newspaper. “Heavy showers⁶⁰, with thunderstorms, may be expected today,” it said on Monday, and so we gave up our picnic, and stayed indoors all day, waiting for the rain. And people would pass the house, going off in cabs and coaches as jolly and merry as could be, the sun shining out, and not a cloud to be seen.

“Ah!” we said, as we stood looking out at them through the window, “won’t they come home soaked!”

And we chuckled to think how wet they were going to get, and came back and made a fire, and got our books, and arranged our collection of seaweed and shells. By twelve o’clock, with the sun pouring into the room, the heat became quite oppressive, and we wondered when those heavy showers and occasional thunderstorms were going to begin.

“Ah! They’ll come in the afternoon, you’ll find,” we said to each other. “Oh, won’t those people get wet. What a lark!⁶¹”

At one o’clock, the landlady came in to ask if we weren’t going out, as it seemed such a lovely day.

“No, no,” we replied, with a knowing chuckle, “not we. We don’t mean to get wet – no, no.”

And when the afternoon was nearly gone, and still there was no sign of rain, we tried to cheer ourselves up with the idea that it would come down all at once, just as the people had started for home, and were out of the reach of any shelter⁶², and that they would thus get more soaked than ever. But not a drop ever fell, and it finished a grand day, and a lovely night after it.

The next morning we read that it was going to be a “warm, fine day; much heat;” and we put light clothing on, and went out, and, half-an-hour after we had started, it began raining hard, and an extremely cold wind sprang up, and both would keep on steadily for the whole day, and we came home with colds and rheumatism all over us, and went to bed.

The weather is a thing that is beyond me⁶³ altogether. I never can understand it. The barometer is useless: it is as misleading as the newspaper forecast.

There was one barometer hanging up in a hotel at Oxford at which I was staying last spring, and, when I got there, it was pointing to “set fair⁶⁴.” It was simply pouring with rain outside, and had been all day; and I couldn’t quite make matters out⁶⁵. I tapped the barometer, and it jumped up and pointed to “very dry.” I tapped it again the next morning, and it went up still higher, and the rain came down faster than ever. On Wednesday I went and hit it again, and the pointer went round towards “set fair,” “very dry,” and “much heat,” until it was stopped by the peg, and couldn’t go any further. It tried its best, it evidently wanted to go on, and prognosticate drought, and water famine, and sunstroke, and such things, but the peg prevented it, and it had to be content with pointing to the commonplace “very dry.”

Meanwhile, the rain came down in a steady torrent, and the lower part of the town was under water, because the river had overflowed. The fine weather never came that summer. I expect that machine must have been referring to the following spring.

Then there are those new styles of barometers, the long straight ones. I never can make head or tail of those⁶⁶. There is one side for 10 a.m. yesterday and one side for 10 a.m. today; but you can’t always get there as early as ten, you know. It rises or falls for rain and fine, with much or less wind, and if you tap it, it doesn’t tell you anything. And you’ve to correct it to sea-level, and reduce it to Fahrenheit, and even then I don’t know the answer.

But who wants to be foretold the weather? When it becomes bad enough, we don’t want to have the misery of knowing about it beforehand. The prophet we like is the old man who, on the particularly gloomy-looking morning of some day when we particularly want it to be fine, looks round the horizon with a particularly knowing eye, and says:

“Oh no, sir, I think it will clear up all right. It will break⁶⁷ all right enough, sir.”

“Ah, he knows”, we say, as we wish him good morning, and start off; “wonderful how these old fellows can tell!”

And we feel affection for that man which is not at all lessened by the circumstances of its not clearing up, but continuing to rain steadily all day.

“Ah, well,” we feel, “he did his best.”

Of the man that prophesies us bad weather, on the contrary, we have only bitter and revengeful thoughts.

“Going to clear up, do you think?” we shout, joyfully, as we pass.

“Well, no, sir; I’m afraid it’s settled down⁶⁸ for the day,” he replies, shaking his head.

“Stupid old fool!” we mutter, “what’s he know about it?” And, if his words prove correct, we come back feeling still more angry with him, and with a vague feeling that, somehow or other, he has had something to do with⁶⁹ it.

It was too bright and sunny on this especial morning for George’s gloomy readings about bad weather to upset us very much: and so, finding that he could not disappoint us, and was only wasting his time, he stole the cigarette that I had carefully rolled up for myself, and went.

Then Harris and I, having finished up the few things left on the table, carried out our luggage on to the doorstep, and waited for a cab.

There seemed a good deal of luggage, when we put it all together. There was the Gladstone⁷⁰ and the small hand-bag, and the two hampers, and a large roll of rugs, and some four or five overcoats and mackintoshes, and a few umbrellas, and then there was a melon by itself in a bag, because it was too bulky to go in anywhere, and a couple of pounds of grapes in another bag, and a Japanese paper umbrella, and a frying pan, which, being too long to pack, we had wrapped round with brown paper.

It did look a lot, and Harris and I began to feel rather ashamed of it, though why we should be, I can’t see. No cab came by, but the street boys did, and got interested in the show, apparently, and stopped.

Biggs’s boy was the first to come round. Biggs is our greengrocer, and his chief talent is to obtain the services of the most abandoned and unprincipled errand-boys⁷¹ that civilisation has ever produced. If anything more than usually wicked in the boy line happens in our neighbourhood, we know that it is Biggs’s latest boy. I was told that, at the time of the Great Coram Street murder⁷², it was quickly concluded by our street that Biggs’s boy (for that period) was at the bottom of it⁷³. In reply to the severe cross-examination to which he was subjected, when he came for orders the morning after the crime, he managed to prove a complete alibi. Otherwise it would have gone hard with him. I didn’t know Biggs’s boy at that time, but, from what I have seen of them since, I should not have attached much importance to that alibi⁷⁴ myself.

Biggs’s boy, as I have said, came round the corner. He was evidently in a great hurry, but, on catching sight of Harris and me, and Montmorency, and the things, he stopped up and stared. Harris and I frowned at him. This might have wounded a more sensitive nature, but Biggs’s boys are not, as a rule, touchy. He came to a dead stop, a yard from our step, and, leaning up against the railings, and fixed his eyes on us, he evidently meant to see this thing out⁷⁵.

In another moment, the grocer’s boy passed on the opposite side of the street. Biggs’s boy cried to him:

“Hi! They are moving.”

The grocer’s boy came across, and took up a position on the other side of the step. Then the young gentleman from the boot-shop stopped, and joined Biggs’s boy.

“They are not going to starve, are they?” said the gentleman from the boot-shop.

By this time, quite a small crowd had collected, and people were asking each other what was the matter. One party (the young and silly portion of the crowd) held that it was a wedding, and pointed out Harris as the bridegroom; while the elder and more thoughtful inclined to the idea that it was a funeral, and that I was probably the corpse’s brother.

At last, an empty cab turned up (it is a street where, as a rule, and when they are not wanted, empty cabs pass at the rate of three a minute, and hang about, and get in your way), and packing ourselves and our belongings into it, and keeping out a couple of Montmorency’s friends, who had evidently sworn never to leave him, we drove away surrounded by the cheering crowd. Biggs’s boy threw a carrot after us for luck.

We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-five train started from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever knows where a train is going to start from, or where a train is going to, or anything about it. The porter who took our things thought it would go from number two platform, while another porter, with whom he discussed the question, had heard a rumour that it would go from number one. The station-master, on the other hand⁷⁶, was convinced it would start from the local platform.

To put an end to the matter⁷⁷, we went upstairs, and asked the traffic superintendent, and he told us that he had just met a man, who said he had seen it at number three platform. We went to number three platform, but the authorities there said that they thought that train was the Southampton express, or else the Windsor loop. But they were sure it wasn’t the Kingston train, though why they were sure they couldn’t say.

Then our porter said he thought that it must be on the high-level platform; said he thought he knew the train. So we went to the high-level platform, and saw the engine-driver⁷⁸, and asked him if he was going to Kingston. He said he couldn’t say for certain of course, but that he rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn’t the 11.05 for Kingston, he said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for Virginia Water, or the 10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in that direction, and we should all know when we got there. We slipped half-a-crown into his hand, and begged him to be the 11.05 for Kingston.

“Nobody will ever know, on this line,” we said, “what you are, or where you’re going. You know the way, you slip off⁷⁹ quietly and go to Kingston.”

“Well, I don’t know, gentlemen,” replied the noble fellow, “but I suppose some train has to go to Kingston; and I’ll do it. Give me the half-crown.”

Thus we got to Kingston by the London and South-Western Railway. We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by was really the Exeter mail, and that they had spent hours at Waterloo, looking for it, and nobody knew what had become of it.

Our boat was waiting for us at Kingston just below bridge, and we went to it, and we stored our luggage round it, and we stepped into it.

“Are you all right, sir?” said the man.

“Right it is,” we answered; and with Harris at the sculls and I at the tiller-lines, and Montmorency, unhappy and deeply suspicious, in the prow⁸⁰, we started our travel on to the waters which, for a fortnight, were to be our home.

Exercises

1. Read the chapter and mark the sentences T (true), F (false) or NI (no information).

1. The narrator was going to get up at 9 o’clock.

2. George was still sleeping when his friends woke up.

3. Montmorency ate chops and cold beef for breakfast.

4. The narrator considers weather forecasts to be very useful.

5. The narrator had a good time staying in a hotel in Oxford.

6. We usually prefer people who prophesy good weather, even if their words don’t prove correct.

7. The friends gathered quite a small crowd to help them with the luggage.

8. There wasn’t any timetable at Waterloo station.

9. The friends had to pay an engine-driver to get to Kingston.

10. George was deeply suspicious at the beginning of the sea trip.

2. Learn the words from the text:

fortnight, interrupt, waste, instead of, weather forecast, occasional, beforehand, meanwhile, wonder, pay attention to, circumstance, afterwards, rumour, on the contrary, beg, convinced, suspicious, prove, grocer, starve.

3. Practice the pronunciation of the following words.

4. Fill in the gaps using the words from the text.

1. It … Mrs. Poppets … woke me up next morning.

2. If I … … you, you’d … lain there for the whole fortnight.

3. He … have been up … himself with eggs and bacon or … the dog instead … sprawling there.

4. We told him that he … have … go without shaving that morning, as we … going to unpack that bag again for him.

5. Montmorency … … two other dogs to come and see him, and they … whiling away the time by … on the doorstep.

6. And so, finding that he … not disappoint us, and … only … his time, he … the cigarette that I … carefully rolled up for …, and … .

7. There … a melon by itself in a bag, because it was … bulky … go in anywhere.

8. … this time, quite a small crowd … collected, and people … asking each … what … the matter.

9. The porter … took our things thought it … go from number two platform, while another porter … heard a rumour that it … … from number one.

10. We learnt … the train we … come by was really the Exeter mail, and that they had … hours at Waterloo, looking … it, and nobody … what … become of it.

5. Match the words with definitions.

6. Find in the text the English equivalents for:

прогноз погоды, мне интересно (почему…), вместо того (чтобы), поздняя осень, обращать внимание на, местная газета, оставаться дома, тратить драгоценное время, сказать наверняка, проспать, знать заранее, злиться на кого-то.

7. Find the words in the text for which the following are synonyms:

respond, foretell, annoying, soaked, obtain, apparently, ordinary, decide, cry, extremely.

8. Explain and expand on the following.

1. It was Mrs. Poppets that woke me up next morning.

2. I do think that this “weather-forecast” fraud is about the most annoying.

3. The barometer is useless: it is as misleading as the newspaper forecast.

4. But who wants to be foretold the weather?

5. Then Harris and I carried out our luggage on to the doorstep, and waited for a cab.

6. By this time, quite a small crowd had collected.

7. Nobody at Waterloo ever knows where a train is going to start from.

8. We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by was really the Exeter mail.

9. Answer the following questions.

1. Did the friends wake up at the time they planned? Why / why not?

2. Why did Harris and the narrator decide to save George?

3. What is the narrator’s attitude to weather forecasts? Why?

4. How did the narrator and his friends spend the holiday he recollects about?

5. What does the narrator think about barometers and weather foretelling?

6. What show did the street boys get interested in? Who was the first?

7. What kind of people Biggs’s boys usually were?

8. Did the friends face any problem at Waterloo station? What was it?

9. How did the friends get to Kingston?

10. Was Montmorency happy to start the journey?

10. Retell the chapter for the persons of the narrator, Biggs’s boy, George, Harris, Montmorency.