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Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

August, 1995  [Etext #308]


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Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome - Scanned and First Proof 
David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk  Second proof: Margaret Price
***



THREE MEN IN A BOAT
(TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG).




Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome





CHAPTER I.


THREE INVALIDS. - SUFFERINGS OF GEORGE AND HARRIS. - A VICTIM TO ONE 
HUNDRED AND SEVEN FATAL MALADIES. - USEFUL PRESCRIPTIONS. - CURE FOR 
LIVER COMPLAINT IN CHILDREN. - WE AGREE THAT WE ARE OVERWORKED, AND NEED 
REST. - A WEEK ON THE ROLLING DEEP? - GEORGE SUGGESTS THE RIVER. - 
MONTMORENCY LODGES AN OBJECTION. - ORIGINAL MOTION CARRIED BY MAJORITY OF 
THREE TO ONE.

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 seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it.  
Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at 
times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said that 
HE had fits of giddiness 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 that 
was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liver-pill 
circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man 
could tell when his liver was out of order.  I had them all.

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine 
advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am 
suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most 
virulent form.  The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly 
with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment 
for some slight ailment of which I had a touch - hay fever, I fancy it 
was.  I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an 
unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently 
study diseases, generally.  I forget which was the first distemper I 
plunged into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I 
had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in 
upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of 
despair, I again turned over the pages.  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 Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too, - began to get 
interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so 
started alphabetically - read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening 
for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another 
fortnight.  Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a 
modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years.  
Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have 
been born with.  I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six 
letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was 
housemaid's knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of 
slight.  Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee?  Why this invidious 
reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed.  I 
reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I 
grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee.  Gout, 
in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my 
being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from 
boyhood.  There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there 
was nothing else the matter with me.

I sat and pondered.  I thought what an interesting case I must be from a 
medical point of view, what an acquisition 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 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, all of 
a sudden, it seemed to start off.  I pulled out my watch and timed it.  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 have since 
been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the 
time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it.  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 it would go, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it 
with the other.  I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I 
could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had 
scarlet fever.

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

I went to my medical man.  He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, 
and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, 
when I fancy I'm ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn 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, commonplace 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.  Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had 
finished.  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 came to discover it all.

Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and 
then he hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it - a cowardly 
thing to do, I call it - and immediately afterwards butted me with the 
side of his head.  After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, 
and folded it up and gave it 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 co-operative stores and family hotel 
combined, I might be able to oblige you.  Being only a chemist hampers 
me."

I read the prescription.  It ran:


"1 lb. beefsteak, with
 1 pt. bitter beer
every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand."


I followed the directions, with the happy result - speaking for myself - 
that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

In the present instance, going back to the liver-pill circular, I had the 
symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a general 
disinclination to work of any kind."

What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell.  From my earliest infancy I 
have been a martyr to it.  As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for 
a day.  They did not know, then, that it was my liver.  Medical science 
was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down 
to laziness.

"Why, you skulking little devil, you," they would 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, strange as it may appear, those clumps on the head often 
cured me - for the time being.  I have known one clump on the head have 
more effect upon my liver, and make me feel more anxious to go straight 
away then and there, and do what was wanted to be done, without further 
loss of time, than a whole box of pills does now.

You know, it often is so - those simple, old-fashioned remedies are 
sometimes more efficacious than all the dispensary stuff.

We sat there for half-an-hour, describing to each other our maladies.  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 stood on the hearth-rug, and gave us a clever and powerful piece 
of acting, illustrative of how he felt in the night.

George FANCIES he is ill; but there's never anything really the matter 
with him, you know.

At this point, Mrs. Poppets knocked at the door to know if we were ready 
for supper.  We smiled sadly at one another, and said we supposed we had 
better try to swallow a bit.  Harris said a little something in one's 
stomach often kept the disease in check; and Mrs. Poppets brought the 
tray in, and we drew up to the table, and toyed with a little steak and 
onions, and some rhubarb tart.

I must have been very weak at the time; because I know, after the first 
half-hour or so, I seemed to take no interest whatever in my food - an 
unusual thing for me - and I didn't want any cheese.

This duty done, we refilled our glasses, lit our pipes, and resumed the 
discussion upon our state of health.  What it was that was actually the 
matter with us, we none of us could be sure of; but the unanimous opinion 
was that it - whatever it was - had been brought on by overwork.

"What we want is rest," said Harris.

"Rest and a complete change," said George.  "The overstrain upon our 
brains has produced a general depression throughout the system.  Change 
of scene, and absence of the necessity for thought, will restore the 
mental equilibrium."

George has a cousin, who is usually described in the charge-sheet as a 
medical student, so that he naturally has a somewhat family-physicianary 
way of putting things.

I agreed with George, and suggested that we should seek out some retired 
and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream away a sunny 
week among its drowsy lanes - some half-forgotten nook, hidden away by 
the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world - some quaint-perched eyrie 
on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth 
century would sound far-off and faint.

Harris said he thought it would be humpy.  He said he knew the sort of 
place I meant; where everybody went to bed at eight o'clock, and you 
couldn't get a REFEREE for love or money, and had to walk ten miles to 
get your baccy.

"No," said Harris, "if you want rest and change, you can't beat a sea 
trip."

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 with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are 
going to enjoy yourself.  You wave an airy adieu 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 Columbus 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 tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer with a wan, 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 stand by the gunwale, 
waiting to step ashore, you begin to thoroughly 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 berth 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 eighteenpence 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 turning somersaults 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.

My friend thought he would close on the two-pound-five job (he is a 
hearty eater), and did so.

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 pondered a good deal during the 
afternoon, and at one time it seemed to him that he had been eating 
nothing but boiled beef for weeks, 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, mingled 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 feeble reply.

And they ran him up quick, and propped him up, over to leeward, and left 
him.

For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin 
captain's biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain) 
and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he got uppish, 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 from the 
landing-stage 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 straight.

So I set my face against the sea trip.  Not, as I explained, upon my own 
account.  I was never queer.  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, from 
affectation - said he had often wished to be, but had never been able.

Then he told us anecdotes 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 living souls on board who were not ill.  
Sometimes it was he and the second mate who were not ill; but it was 
generally he and one other man.  If not he and another man, then it was 
he by himself.

It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land.  At sea, you 
come across plenty of people 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 enigma 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 mild young man's envious query; 
"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 pickles, you know.  They were the 
most disgraceful pickles I ever tasted in a respectable boat.  Did you 
have any?"

For myself, I have discovered an excellent preventive against sea-
sickness, in balancing myself.  You stand in the centre of the deck, and, 
as the ship heaves and pitches, 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; the constant change 
of scene would occupy our minds (including what there was of Harris's); 
and the hard work would give us a good appetite, and make us sleep well.

Harris said he didn't think George ought to do anything that would have a 
tendency to make him sleepier than he always was, as it might be 
dangerous.

He said he didn't very well understand how George was going to sleep any 
more than he did now, seeing that there were only twenty-four hours in 
each day, summer and winter alike; but thought that if he DID sleep any 
more, he might just as well be dead, and so save his board and lodging.

Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a "T."  I don't 
know what a "T" is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and-
butter and cake AD LIB., and is cheap at the price, if you haven't had 
any dinner).  It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to 
its credit.

It suited me to a "T" too, and Harris and I both said it was a good idea 
of George's; and we said it in a tone that seemed to somehow imply that 
we were surprised that George should have come out so sensible.

The only one who was not struck with the suggestion was Montmorency.  He 
never did care for the river, did Montmorency.

"It's all very well for you fellows," he says; "you like it, but I don't.  
There's nothing for me to do.  Scenery is not in my line, 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 slop me overboard.  If you ask me, I 
call the whole thing bally foolishness."

We were three to one, however, and the motion was carried.




CHAPTER II.


PLANS DISCUSSED. - PLEASURES OF "CAMPING-OUT," ON FINE NIGHTS. - DITTO, 
WET NIGHTS. - COMPROMISE DECIDED ON. - MONTMORENCY, FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF. 
- FEARS LEST HE IS TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD, FEARS SUBSEQUENTLY DISMISSED 
AS GROUNDLESS. - MEETING ADJOURNS.

WE pulled out the maps, and discussed plans.

We arranged to start on the following Saturday from Kingston.  Harris and 
I would go down 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, 
so patriarchal like.

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the 
cold, sad clouds.  Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased 
their song, and only the moorhen's plaintive cry and the harsh croak of 
the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the 
dying day breathes out her last.

From the dim woods on either bank, Night's ghostly army, the grey 
shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear-
guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the 
waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her 
sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from 
her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness.

Then we run our little boat into some quiet nook, and the tent is 
pitched, and the frugal supper cooked and eaten.  Then the big pipes are 
filled and lighted, and the pleasant chat goes round in musical 
undertone; while, in the pauses of our talk, the river, playing round the 
boat, prattles 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, who 
have learnt to love its changing face, who have so often nestled on its 
yielding bosom, think, somehow, we understand, though we could not tell 
you in mere words the story that we listen to.

And we sit there, by its margin, while the moon, who loves it too, stoops 
down to kiss it with a sister's kiss, and throws her silver arms around 
it clingingly; 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-place, 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 lapping 
water and the rustling trees, we fall asleep beneath the great, still 
stars, and dream that the world is young again - young and sweet as she 
used to be ere the centuries of fret and care had furrowed her fair face, 
ere her children's sins and follies had made old her loving heart - sweet 
as she was in those bygone days when, a new-made mother, she nursed us, 
her children, upon her own deep breast - ere the wiles of painted 
civilization had lured us away from her fond arms, and the poisoned 
sneers of artificiality had made us ashamed of the simple life we led 
with her, and the simple, stately home where mankind was born so many 
thousands years ago.

Harris said:

"How about when it rained?"

You can never rouse Harris.  There is no poetry about Harris - no wild 
yearning for the unattainable.  Harris never "weeps, 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 Worcester over his chop.

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

"Hark! do you not hear?  Is it but the mermaids singing deep below the 
waving waters; or sad spirits, chanting dirges for white corpses, held by 
seaweed?"  Harris would take you by the arm, and say:

"I know what it is, old man; you've got a chill.  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 does know 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 regarded the camping out, his 
practical view of the matter came as a very timely hint.  Camping out in 
rainy weather is not pleasant.

It is evening.  You are wet through, and there is a good two inches of 
water in the boat, and all the things are damp.  You find a place on the 
banks that is not quite so puddly as other places you have seen, and you 
land and lug out the tent, and two of you 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 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 herculean.  Instead of helping you, it seems to 
you that the other man is simply playing the fool.  Just as you get your 
side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end, and spoils it 
all.

"Here! what are you up to?" you call out.

"What are YOU up to?" he retorts; "leggo, can't you?"

"Don't pull it; you've got it all wrong, you stupid ass!" 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 give your ropes a lug that pulls all his pegs out.

"Ah, the bally idiot!" you hear him mutter to himself; and then comes a 
savage haul, and away goes your side.  You lay down the mallet and 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 tumbles down in a heap, 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 out 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 what the thundering 
blazes you're playing at, and why the blarmed 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 stove, and crowd round that.

Rainwater is the chief article of diet at supper.  The bread is two-
thirds rainwater, the beefsteak-pie is exceedingly 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 and inebriates, if 
taken in proper quantity, and this restores to you sufficient interest in 
life to induce you to 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 bosom.  You 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 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 smothered.

Somebody else seems in trouble, too.  You can hear his faint cries coming 
from underneath your bed.  Determining, at all events, to sell your life 
dearly, you struggle frantically, hitting out right and left with arms 
and legs, and yelling lustily the while, and at last something gives way, 
and you find your head in the fresh air.  Two feet off, you dimly observe 
a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, and you are preparing for a 
life-and-death struggle with him, when it begins to dawn upon you that 
it's Jim.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" he says, recognising you at the same moment.

"Yes," you answer, rubbing your eyes; "what's happened?"

"Bally 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 rocks, and the muffled voice that you heard before 
replies from out the ruin:

"Get off my head, can't you?"

And Bill struggles out, a muddy, trampled wreck, and in an unnecessarily 
aggressive mood - he being under the evident belief that the whole thing 
has been done on purpose.

In the morning you are all three speechless, owing to having caught 
severe colds in the 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 on fine nights; and hotel 
it, and inn it, and pub. it, like respectable folks, when it was wet, or 
when we felt inclined for a change.

Montmorency hailed this compromise with much approval.  He does not revel 
in romantic solitude.  Give him something noisy; and if a trifle low, so 
much the jollier.  To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was 
an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, 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-something-to-make-it-better-and-
nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the 
tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen.

When first he came to live at my expense, I never thought I should be 
able to get him to stop long.  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 snatched up to the bright skies in a chariot, 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 had had a dead cat brought 
round for my inspection by an irate female, who called me a murderer; and 
had been summoned by the man next door but one for having a ferocious dog 
at large, that had kept him pinned up in his own tool-shed, afraid to 
venture his nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold night; and 
had learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirty 
shillings by backing him to kill rats against time, then I began to think 
that maybe they'd let him remain on earth for a bit longer, after all.

To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the most disreputable dogs 
to be found in the town, and lead them out to march round the slums to 
fight other disreputable dogs, is Montmorency's idea of "life;" and so, 
as I before observed, he gave to the suggestion of inns, and pubs., and 
hotels his most emphatic approbation.

Having thus settled the sleeping arrangements to the satisfaction of all 
four of us, the only thing left to discuss 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 
smile, 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, as 
I had a presentiment that a little whisky, warm, with a slice of lemon, 
would do my complaint good, the debate was, by common assent, adjourned 
to the following night; and the assembly put on its hats and went out.




CHAPTER III.


ARRANGEMENTS SETTLED. - HARRIS'S METHOD OF DOING WORK. - HOW THE ELDERLY, 
FAMILY-MAN PUTS UP A PICTURE. - GEORGE MAKES A SENSIBLE, REMARK. - 
DELIGHTS OF EARLY MORNING BATHING. - PROVISIONS FOR GETTING UPSET.

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 over - 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 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 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 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 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 spring 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?  I never came 
across such a set in all my life - upon my word I didn't.  Six of you! - 
and you can't find a coat 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, you can give it up!  I've found it myself now.  Might just 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 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 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, gaping 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 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 by 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, 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 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 second blow, the nail 
would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it, and 
Uncle Podger be precipitated against the wall 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 wall for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed 
down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched - except Uncle 
Podger.

"There you 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!"

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 discarded.  It was clear that the 
upper reaches of the Thames would not allow of the navigation of a boat 
sufficiently large to take the things we had set down as indispensable; 
so we tore the list up, and looked at one another!

George said:

"You know we are on a wrong track altogether.  We must not think of the 
things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do 
without."

George comes out really quite sensible at times.  You'd be surprised.  I 
call that downright wisdom, not merely 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 till it is ever in danger of 
swamping 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 craft mast-high with fine clothes and big 
houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not 
care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; 
with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and 
fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest 
lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries 
that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the 
criminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head 
that wears it!

It is lumber, man - all lumber!  Throw it overboard.  It makes the boat 
so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars.  It makes it so 
cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom 
from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness - 
no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or 
the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the 
great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods 
all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-
waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget-me-nots.

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 liable 
to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain 
merchandise will stand water.  You will have time to think as well as to 
work.  Time to drink in life's sunshine - time to listen to the AEolian 
music 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, from 
stem to stern, and it converts the boat into a sort of little house, and 
it is beautifully cosy, though a trifle stuffy; but there, everything has 
its drawbacks, 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 (sounds like a French exercise, doesn't it?), 
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 have a dip 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 virtue 
has triumphed, and I have got out at six and half-dressed myself, and 
have taken my drawers and towel, and stumbled 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 up 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 chucks 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 frantically 
for 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 plunge into the limpid 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 towing sufficient food 
for Harris up against stream, as it was.

I urged upon George, 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 hundredweight 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 were weak enough to fancy 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 impostor, who could evidently have known nothing whatever 
about the matter.  If you had seen these clothes after - but, as the 
shilling shockers say, we anticipate.

George impressed upon us to take a change of under-things 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.




CHAPTER IV.


THE FOOD QUESTION. - OBJECTIONS TO PARAFFINE OIL AS AN ATMOSPHERE. - 
ADVANTAGES OF CHEESE AS A TRAVELLING COMPANION. - A MARRIED WOMAN DESERTS 
HER HOME. - FURTHER PROVISION FOR GETTING UPSET. - I PACK. - CUSSEDNESS 
OF TOOTH-BRUSHES. - GEORGE AND HARRIS PACK. - AWFUL BEHAVIOUR OF 
MONTMORENCY. - WE RETIRE TO REST.

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; but we 
merely urged him not to be an ass, and George went on) - "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.  I never saw such a thing as 
paraffine oil is to ooze.  We kept it in the nose of the boat, and, from 
there, it oozed down to the rudder, impregnating 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; but whether it came 
from the Arctic snows, or was raised in the waste of the desert sands, it 
came alike to us laden with the fragrance of paraffine oil.

And that oil oozed up and ruined the sunset; and as for the moonbeams, 
they positively reeked of paraffine.

We tried to get away from it at Marlow.  We left the boat by the bridge, 
and took a walk through the town to escape it, but it followed us.  The 
whole town was full of oil.  We passed through the church-yard, and it 
seemed as if the people had been buried in oil.  The High Street stunk of 
oil; we wondered how people could live in it.  And we walked miles upon 
miles out Birmingham way; but it was no use, the country was steeped in 
oil.

At the end of that trip we met together at midnight in a lonely field, 
under a blasted oak, and took an awful oath (we had been swearing for a 
whole week about the thing in an ordinary, middle-class way, but this was 
a swell affair) - an awful oath never to take paraffine oil with us in a 
boat again-except, of course, in case of sickness.

Therefore, in the present instance, we confined ourselves to methylated 
spirit.  Even that is bad enough.  You get methylated pie and methylated 
cake.  But methylated spirit is more wholesome when taken into the system 
in large quantities than paraffine oil.

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.  It wants the 
whole boat to itself.  It goes through the hamper, and 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 two hundred 
horse-power scent about them that might have been warranted to carry 
three miles, and knock a man over at two hundred yards.  I was in 
Liverpool at the time, and my friend said that if I didn't mind he would 
get me to take them back with me to London, as he should not be coming up 
for a day or two himself, and he did not think the cheeses ought to be 
kept much longer.

"Oh, with pleasure, dear boy," I replied, "with pleasure."

I called for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab.  It was a 
ramshackle affair, dragged along by a knock-kneed, broken-winded 
somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment of enthusiasm, during 
conversation, referred to as a horse.  I put the cheeses on the top, and 
we started off at a shamble that would have done credit to the swiftest 
steam-roller ever built, and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we 
turned the corner.  There, the wind carried a whiff from the cheeses full 
on to our steed.  It woke him up, and, with a snort of terror, he dashed 
off at three miles an hour.  The wind still blew in his direction, and 
before we reached the end of the street he was laying himself out at the 
rate of nearly four miles an hour, leaving the cripples and stout old 
ladies simply nowhere.

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, even then, had not one of the 
men had the presence of mind to put a handkerchief over his nose, and to 
light 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 crusty old gentleman objected, but I got in, 
notwithstanding; and, putting my cheeses upon the rack, 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," said the man next 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 stout lady got up, and said it was disgraceful that a 
respectable married woman should be harried about in this way, and 
gathered up a bag and eight parcels and went.  The remaining four 
passengers sat on for a while, until a solemn-looking man in the corner, 
who, from his dress and general appearance, seemed to belong to the 
undertaker class, said it put him in mind of dead baby; and 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's yours?" I said, turning to my friend.

"I'll have half-a-crown's worth of brandy, neat, if you please, miss," 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 y' 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 stagger back 
into the arms of the man behind him; and they would all come and have a 
sniff, and then droop off and squeeze into other carriages, or pay the 
difference and go first.

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 queried, "if I gave a man a sovereign 
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 honour of 
residing is a widow, and, for all I know, possibly an orphan too.  She 
has a strong, I may say an eloquent, objection to being what she terms 
`put upon.'  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 an hotel until those cheeses are 
eaten.  I decline to live any longer in the same house with them."

She kept her word, leaving the place in charge of the charwoman, 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.  It was argued from this that little 
injury could result to the woman from the atmosphere, and she was left.

The hotel bill came to fifteen guineas; and my friend, after reckoning 
everything up, 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 
means; 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 faint.  And, after that, he took them one 
dark night and left them in the parish mortuary.  But the coroner 
discovered them, and made a fearful fuss.

He said it was a plot to deprive him of his living 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.  It gained the place quite a 
reputation.  Visitors said they had never noticed before how strong the 
air was, and weak-chested and consumptive people used to throng there for 
years afterwards.

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

"We shan't want any tea," said George (Harris's face fell at this); "but 
we'll have a good round, square, slap-up 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 concoction of Harris's, which you mixed with water and 
called lemonade, plenty of tea, and a bottle of whisky, in case, as 
George said, we got upset.

It seemed to me that George harped too much on the getting-upset idea.  
It seemed to me the wrong spirit to go about the trip in.

But I'm glad we took the whisky.

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 doing a 
mouch 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, before we parted that evening.  The next day, which was Friday, we 
got them all together, and met in the evening to pack.  We got a big 
Gladstone for the clothes, and a couple of hampers for the victuals and 
the cooking utensils.  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.  (It 
surprises me myself, sometimes, how many of these subjects there are.)  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 that had something uncanny about it.  George 
put on a pipe and spread himself over the easy-chair, and Harris cocked 
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.  There is nothing does irritate me more than seeing other 
people sitting about doing nothing when I'm working.

I lived with a man once who used to make me mad that way.  He would loll 
on the sofa and watch me doing things by the hour together, following me 
round the room with his eyes, wherever I went.  He said it did him real 
good to look on at me, messing about.  He said it made him feel that life 
was not an idle dream to be gaped and yawned through, but a noble task, 
full of duty and stern work.  He said he often wondered now how he could 
have gone on before he met me, never having anybody to look at while they 
worked.

Now, I'm not like that.  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.

"Ain'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, 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 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 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 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 a hang whether the soap was in or 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 said 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 show 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 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 trod 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!  I never saw two 
men do more with one-and-twopence worth of butter 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," 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, 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 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 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 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 land him with the frying-pan.

Harris said 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 said 
he hoped nothing would be found broken.  George said that if anything was 
broken it was broken, which reflection seemed to comfort him.  He also 
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, on going over, that he had been 
asleep for some time; so we placed the bath where he could tumble into it 
on getting out in the morning, and went to bed ourselves.




CHAPTER V.


MRS. P. AROUSES US. - GEORGE, THE SLUGGARD. - THE "WEATHER FORECAST" 
SWINDLE. - OUR LUGGAGE. - DEPRAVITY OF THE SMALL BOY. - THE PEOPLE GATHER 
ROUND US. - WE DRIVE OFF IN GREAT STYLE, AND ARRIVE AT WATERLOO. - 
INNOCENCE OF SOUTH WESTERN OFFICIALS CONCERNING SUCH WORLDLY THINGS AS 
TRAINS. - WE ARE AFLOAT, AFLOAT IN AN OPEN BOAT.

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 was a-
oversleeping yourselves."

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 retorted.  "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 woke you, you'd 
have lain there for the whole fortnight."

We snarled at one another in this strain for the next few minutes, when 
we were interrupted by a defiant snore from George.

It reminded us, for the first time since our being called, 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, I am sure; but the sight of another man 
asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.  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 in hideous sloth the inestimable gift of 
time; his valuable life, every second of which he would have to account 
for hereafter, passing away from him, unused.  He might have been up 
stuffing himself with eggs and bacon, irritating the dog, or flirting 
with the slavey, instead of sprawling there, sunk in soul-clogging 
oblivion.

It was a terrible thought.  Harris and I appeared to be struck by it at 
the same instant.  We determined to save him, and, in this noble resolve, 
our own dispute was forgotten.  We flew across and slung the clothes off 
him, and Harris landed him one with a slipper, and I shouted in his ear, 
and he awoke.

"Wasermarrer?" he observed, sitting up.

"Get up, you fat-headed chunk!" roared Harris.  "It's quarter to ten."

"What!" he shrieked, jumping out of bed into the bath; "Who the thunder 
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 extras, we remembered that 
we had packed the tooth-brushes and the brush and comb (that tooth-brush 
of mine will be the death of me, 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.

He said:

"Don't be absurd.  How can I go into the City like this?"

It was certainly rather rough on the City, but what cared we for human 
suffering?  As Harris said, in his common, vulgar way, the City would 
have to lump it.

We went downstairs to breakfast.  Montmorency had invited two other dogs 
to come and see him off, and they were whiling away the time 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 paper, and read us out the boating fatalities, and 
the weather forecast, which latter prophesied "rain, cold, wet to fine" 
(whatever more than usually ghastly thing in weather that may be), 
"occasional local thunder-storms, east wind, with general depression over 
the Midland Counties (London and Channel).  Bar. falling."

I do think that, of all the silly, irritating tomfoolishness by which we 
are plagued, this "weather-forecast" fraud is about the most aggravating.  
It "forecasts" precisely what happened yesterday or a the day before, and 
precisely the opposite of what is going to happen to-day.

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 showers, with thunderstorms, may be expected to-day," it would say 
on Monday, and so we would give up our picnic, and stop indoors all day, 
waiting for the rain. - And people would pass the house, going off in 
wagonettes 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 stirred the fire, and got our books, and arranged our specimens of 
seaweed and cockle 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!"

At one o'clock, the landlady would come 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 shelter, and that they would thus get more drenched 
than ever.  But not a drop ever fell, and it finished a grand day, and a 
lovely night after it.

The next morning we would read that it was going to be a "warm, fine to 
set-fair day; much heat;" and we would dress ourselves in flimsy things, 
and go out, and, half-an-hour after we had started, it would commence to 
rain hard, and a bitterly cold wind would spring up, and both would keep 
on steadily for the whole day, and we would come home with colds and 
rheumatism all over us, and go to bed.

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

There was one hanging up in a hotel at Oxford at which I was staying last 
spring, and, when I got there, it was pointing to "set fair."  It was 
simply pouring with rain outside, and had been all day; and I couldn't 
quite make matters out.  I tapped the barometer, and it jumped up and 
pointed to "very dry."  The Boots stopped as he was passing, and said he 
expected it meant to-morrow.  I fancied that maybe it was thinking of the 
week before last, but Boots said, No, he thought not.

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, but the instrument was built so that it couldn't prophesy 
fine weather any harder than it did without breaking itself.  It 
evidently wanted to go on, and prognosticate drought, and water famine, 
and sunstroke, and simooms, and such things, but the peg prevented it, 
and it had to be content with pointing to the mere commonplace "very 
dry."

Meanwhile, the rain came down in a steady torrent, and the lower part of 
the town was under water, owing to the river having overflowed.

Boots said it was evident that we were going to have a prolonged spell of 
grand weather SOME TIME, and read out a poem which was printed over the 
top of the oracle, about


"Long foretold, long last;
Short notice, soon past."


The fine weather never came that summer.  I expect that machine must have 
been referring to the following spring.

Then there are those new style of barometers, the long straight ones.  I 
never can make head or tail of those.  There is one side for 10 a.m. 
yesterday, and one side for 10 a.m. to-day; 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 one end is "Nly" and the other "Ely" (what's 
Ely got to do with it?), and if you tap it, it doesn't tell you anything.  
And you've got 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?  It is bad enough when it 
comes, without our having 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 break 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 an 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."

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

"Going to clear up, d'ye think?" we shout, cheerily, as we pass.

"Well, no, sir; I'm afraid it's settled down for the day," he replies, 
shaking his head.

"Stupid old fool!" we mutter, "what's HE know about it?"  And, if his 
portent proves correct, we come back feeling still more angry against 
him, and with a vague notion that, somehow or other, he has had something 
to do with it.

It was too bright and sunny on this especial morning for George's blood-
curdling readings about "Bar. falling," "atmospheric disturbance, passing 
in an oblique line over Southern Europe," and "pressure increasing," to 
very much upset us: and so, finding that he could not make us wretched, 
and was only wasting his time, he sneaked 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, 
carted 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 Gladstone and the small hand-bag, and the two hampers, and a 
large roll of rugs, and some four or five overcoats and macintoshes, 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 lies in securing the services of the most abandoned and 
unprincipled errand-boys that civilisation has as yet produced.  If 
anything more than usually villainous in the boy-line crops up in our 
neighbourhood, we know that it is Biggs's latest.  I was told that, at 
the time of the Great Coram Street murder, it was promptly concluded by 
our street that Biggs's boy (for that period) was at the bottom of it, 
and had he not been able, in reply to the severe cross-examination to 
which he was subjected by No. 19, when he called there for orders the 
morning after the crime (assisted by No. 21, who happened to be on the 
step at the time), to prove a complete ALIBI, 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 
ALIBI myself.

Biggs's boy, as I have said, came round the corner.  He was evidently in 
a great hurry when he first dawned upon the vision, but, on catching 
sight of Harris and me, and Montmorency, and the things, he eased 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 selecting a straw to chew, fixed us with his eye.  He 
evidently meant to see this thing out.

In another moment, the grocer's boy passed on the opposite side of the 
street.  Biggs's boy hailed him:

"Hi! ground floor o' 42's a-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; while the empty-can superintendent from "The Blue 
Posts" took up an independent position on the curb.

"They ain't a-going to starve, are they? " said the gentleman from the 
boot-shop.

"Ah! you'd want to take a thing or two with YOU," retorted "The Blue 
Posts," "if you was a-going to cross the Atlantic in a small boat."

"They ain't a-going to cross the Atlantic," struck in Biggs's boy; 
"they're a-going to find Stanley."

By this time, quite a small crowd had collected, and people were asking 
each other what was the matter.  One party (the young and giddy portion 
of the crowd) held that it was a wedding, and pointed out Harris as the 
bridegroom; while the elder and more thoughtful among the populace 
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 shooting out a couple of Montmorency's friends, 
who had evidently sworn never to forsake him, we drove away amidst the 
cheers of the crowd, Biggs's boy shying a carrot after us for luck.

We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-five started 
from.  Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever does know where a 
train is going to start from, or where a train when it does start 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 hand, was convinced it would start 
from the local.

To put an end to the matter, 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 rather 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 it wasn't they 
couldn't say.

Then our porter said he thought that must be it on the high-level 
platform; said he thought he knew the train.  So we went to the high-
level platform, and saw the engine-driver, 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 11.5 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 11.5 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 off quietly and go to 
Kingston."

"Well, I don't know, gents," replied the noble fellow, "but I suppose 
SOME train's got to go to Kingston; and I'll do it.  Gimme 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 to it we 
wended our way, and round it we stored our luggage, and into it we 
stepped.

"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 
prow, out we shot on to the waters which, for a fortnight, were to be our 
home.




CHAPTER VI.


KINGSTON. - INSTRUCTIVE REMARKS ON EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. - INSTRUCTIVE 
OBSERVATIONS ON CARVED OAK AND LIFE IN GENERAL. - SAD CASE OF STIVVINGS, 
JUNIOR. - MUSINGS ON ANTIQUITY. - I FORGET THAT I AM STEERING. - 
INTERESTING RESULT. - HAMPTON COURT MAZE. - HARRIS AS A GUIDE.

IT was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as you care to 
take it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf is blushing to a deeper 
green; and the year seems like a fair young maid, trembling with strange, 
wakening pulses on the brink of womanhood.

The quaint back streets of Kingston, where they came down to the water's 
edge, looked quite picturesque in the flashing sunlight, the glinting 
river with its drifting barges, the wooded towpath, the trim-kept villas 
on the other side, Harris, in a red and orange blazer, grunting away at 
the sculls, the distant glimpses of the grey old palace of the Tudors, 
all made a sunny picture, so bright but calm, so full of life, and yet so 
peaceful, that, early in the day though it was, I felt myself being 
dreamily lulled off into a musing fit.

I mused on Kingston, or "Kyningestun," as it was once called in the days 
when Saxon "kinges" were crowned there.  Great Caesar crossed the river 
there, and the Roman legions camped upon its sloping uplands.  Caesar, 
like, in later years, Elizabeth, seems to have stopped everywhere: only 
he was more respectable than good Queen Bess; he didn't put up at the 
public-houses.

She was nuts on public-houses, was England's Virgin Queen.  There's 
scarcely a pub. of any attractions within ten miles of London that she 
does not seem to have looked in at, or stopped at, or slept at, some time 
or other.  I wonder now, supposing Harris, say, turned over a new leaf, 
and became a great and good man, and got to be Prime Minister, and died, 
if they would put up signs over the public-houses that he had patronised: 
"Harris had a glass of bitter in this house;" "Harris had two of Scotch 
cold here in the summer of `88;" "Harris was chucked from here in 
December, 1886."

No, there would be too many of them!  It would be the houses that he had 
never entered that would become famous.  "Only house in South London that 
Harris never had a drink in!"  The people would flock to it to see what 
could have been the matter with it.

How poor weak-minded King Edwy must have hated Kyningestun!  The 
coronation feast had been too much for him.  Maybe boar's head stuffed 
with sugar-plums did not agree with him (it wouldn't with me, I know), 
and he had had enough of sack and mead; so he slipped from the noisy 
revel to steal a quiet moonlight hour with his beloved Elgiva.

Perhaps, from the casement, standing hand-in-hand, they were watching the 
calm moonlight on the river, while from the distant halls the boisterous 
revelry floated in broken bursts of faint-heard din and tumult.

Then brutal Odo and St. Dunstan force their rude way into the quiet room, 
and hurl coarse insults at the sweet-faced Queen, and drag poor Edwy back 
to the loud clamour of the drunken brawl.

Years later, to the crash of battle-music, Saxon kings and Saxon revelry 
were buried side by side, and Kingston's greatness passed away for a 
time, to rise once more when Hampton Court became the palace of the 
Tudors and the Stuarts, and the royal barges strained at their moorings 
on the river's bank, and bright-cloaked gallants swaggered down the 
water-steps to cry: "What Ferry, ho!  Gadzooks, gramercy."

Many of the old houses, round about, speak very plainly of those days 
when Kingston was a royal borough, and nobles and courtiers lived there, 
near their King, and the long road to the palace gates was gay all day 
with clanking steel and prancing palfreys, and rustling silks and 
velvets, and fair faces.  The large and spacious houses, with their 
oriel, latticed windows, their huge fireplaces, and their gabled roofs, 
breathe of the days of hose and doublet, of pearl-embroidered stomachers, 
and complicated oaths.  They were upraised in the days "when men knew how 
to build."  The hard red bricks have only grown more firmly set with 
time, and their oak stairs do not creak and grunt when you try to go down 
them quietly.

Speaking of oak staircases reminds me that there is a magnificent carved 
oak staircase in one of the houses in Kingston.  It is a shop now, in the 
market-place, but it was evidently once the mansion of some great 
personage.  A friend of mine, who lives at Kingston, went in there to buy 
a hat one day, and, in a thoughtless moment, put his hand in his pocket 
and paid for it then and there.

The shopman (he knows my friend) was naturally a little staggered at 
first; but, quickly recovering himself, and feeling that something ought 
to be done to encourage this sort of thing, asked our hero if he would 
like to see some fine old carved oak.  My friend said he would, and the 
shopman, thereupon, took him through the shop, and up the staircase of 
the house.  The balusters were a superb piece of workmanship, and the 
wall all the way up was oak-panelled, with carving that would have done 
credit to a palace.

From the stairs, they went into the drawing-room, which was a large, 
bright room, decorated with a somewhat startling though cheerful paper of 
a blue ground.  There was nothing, however, remarkable about the 
apartment, and my friend wondered why he had been brought there.  The 
proprietor went up to the paper, and tapped it.  It gave forth a wooden 
sound.

"Oak," he explained.  "All carved oak, right up to the ceiling, just the 
same as you saw on the staircase."

"But, great Caesar! man," expostulated my friend; "you don't mean to say 
you have covered over carved oak with blue wall-paper?"

"Yes," was the reply: "it was expensive work.  Had to match-board it all 
over first, of course.  But the room looks cheerful now.  It was awful 
gloomy before."

I can't say I altogether blame the man (which is doubtless a great relief 
to his mind).  From his point of view, which would be that of the average 
householder, desiring to take life as lightly as possible, and not that 
of the old-curiosity-shop maniac, there is reason on his side.  Carved 
oak is very pleasant to look at, and to have a little of, but it is no 
doubt somewhat depressing to live in, for those whose fancy does not lie 
that way.  It would be like living in a church.

No, what was sad in his case was that he, who didn't care for carved oak, 
should have his drawing-room panelled with it, while people who do care 
for it have to pay enormous prices to get it.  It seems to be the rule of 
this world.  Each person has what he doesn't want, and other people have 
what he does want.

Married men have wives, and don't seem to want them; and young single 
fellows cry out that they can't get them.  Poor people who can hardly 
keep themselves have eight hearty children.  Rich old couples, with no 
one to leave their money to, die childless.

Then there are girls with lovers.  The girls that have lovers never want 
them.  They say they would rather be without them, that they bother them, 
and why don't they go and make love to Miss Smith and Miss Brown, who are 
plain and elderly, and haven't got any lovers?  They themselves don't 
want lovers.  They never mean to marry.

It does not do to dwell on these things; it makes one so sad.

There was a boy at our school, we used to call him Sandford and Merton.  
His real name was Stivvings.  He was the most extraordinary lad I ever 
came across.  I believe he really liked study.  He used to get into awful 
rows for sitting up in bed and reading Greek; and as for French irregular 
verbs there was simply no keeping him away from them.  He was full of 
weird and unnatural notions about being a credit to his parents and an 
honour to the school; and he yearned to win prizes, and grow up and be a 
clever man, and had all those sorts of weak-minded ideas.  I never knew 
such a strange creature, yet harmless, mind you, as the babe unborn.

Well, that boy used to get ill about twice a week, so that he couldn't go 
to school.  There never was such a boy to get ill as that Sandford and 
Merton.  If there was any known disease going within ten miles of him, he 
had it, and had it badly.  He would take bronchitis in the dog-days, and 
have hay-fever at Christmas.  After a six weeks' period of drought, he 
would be stricken down with rheumatic fever; and he would go out in a 
November fog and come home with a sunstroke.

They put him under laughing-gas one year, poor lad, and drew all his 
teeth, and gave him a false set, because he suffered so terribly with 
toothache; and then it turned to neuralgia and ear-ache.  He was never 
without a cold, except once for nine weeks while he had scarlet fever; 
and he always had chilblains.  During the great cholera scare of 1871, 
our neighbourhood was singularly free from it.  There was only one 
reputed case in the whole parish: that case was young Stivvings.

He had to stop in bed when he was ill, and eat chicken and custards and 
hot-house grapes; and he would lie there and sob, because they wouldn't 
let him do Latin exercises, and took his German grammar away from him.

And we other boys, who would have sacrificed ten terms of our school-life 
for the sake of being ill for a day, and had no desire whatever to give 
our parents any excuse for being stuck-up about us, couldn't catch so 
much as a stiff neck.  We fooled about in draughts, and it did us good, 
and freshened us up; and we took things to make us sick, and they made us 
fat, and gave us an appetite.  Nothing we could think of seemed to make 
us ill until the holidays began.  Then, on the breaking-up day, we caught 
colds, and whooping cough, and all kinds of disorders, which lasted till 
the term recommenced; when, in spite of everything we could manoeuvre to 
the contrary, we would get suddenly well again, and be better than ever.

Such is life; and we are but as grass that is cut down, and put into the 
oven and baked.

To go back to the carved-oak question, they must have had very fair 
notions of the artistic and the beautiful, our great-great-grandfathers.  
Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of 
three or four hundred years ago.  I wonder if there is real intrinsic 
beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we 
prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that 
gives them their charms in our eyes.  The "old blue" that we hang about 
our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a 
few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses 
that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they 
understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the 
eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried.

Will it be the same in the future?  Will the prized treasures of to-day 
always be the cheap trifles of the day before?  Will rows of our willow-
pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in 
the years 2000 and odd?  Will the white cups with the gold rim and the 
beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now 
break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and 
stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house?

That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings.  It 
is a white dog.  Its eyes blue.  Its nose is a delicate red, with spots.  
Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to 
verge of imbecility.  I do not admire it myself.  Considered as a work of 
art, I may say it irritates me.  Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even 
my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by 
the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her.

But in 200 years' time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug 
up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and 
will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet.  And people will 
pass it round, and admire it.  They will be struck by the wonderful depth 
of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of 
the tail that is lost no doubt was.

We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog.  We are too familiar 
with it.  It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their 
loveliness because they are common to our eyes.  So it is with that china 
dog.  In 2288 people will gush over it.  The making of such dogs will 
have become a lost art.  Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and 
say how clever we were.  We shall be referred to lovingly as "those grand 
old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those 
china dogs."

The "sampler" that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as 
"tapestry of the Victorian era," and be almost priceless.  The blue-and-
white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked 
and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use 
them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the 
"Presents from Ramsgate," and "Souvenirs of Margate," that may have 
escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English 
curios.

At this point Harris threw away the sculls, got up and left his seat, and 
sat on his back, and stuck his legs in the air.  Montmorency howled, and 
turned a somersault, and the top hamper jumped up, and all the things 
came out.

I was somewhat surprised, but I did not lose my temper.  I said, 
pleasantly enough:

"Hulloa! what's that for?"

"What's that for?  Why - "

No, on second thoughts, I will not repeat what Harris said.  I may have 
been to blame, I admit it; but nothing excuses violence of language and 
coarseness of expression, especially in a man who has been carefully 
brought up, as I know Harris has been.  I was thinking of other things, 
and forgot, as any one might easily understand, that I was steering, and 
the consequence was that we had got mixed up a good deal with the tow-
path.  It was difficult to say, for the moment, which was us and which 
was the Middlesex bank of the river; but we found out after a while, and 
separated ourselves.

Harris, however, said he had done enough for a bit, and proposed that I 
should take a turn; so, as we were in, I got out and took the tow-line, 
and ran the boat on past Hampton Court.  What a dear old wall that is 
that runs along by the river there!  I never pass it without feeling 
better for the sight of it.  Such a mellow, bright, sweet old wall; what 
a charming picture it would make, with the lichen creeping here, and the 
moss growing there, a shy young vine peeping over the top at this spot, 
to see what is going on upon the busy river, and the sober old ivy 
clustering a little farther down!  There are fifty shades and tints and 
hues in every ten yards of that old wall.  If I could only draw, and knew 
how to paint, I could make a lovely sketch of that old wall, I'm sure.  
I've often thought I should like to live at Hampton Court.  It looks so 
peaceful and so quiet, and it is such a dear old place to ramble round in 
the early morning before many people are about.

But, there, I don't suppose I should really care for it when it came to 
actual practice.  It would be so ghastly dull and depressing in the 
evening, when your lamp cast uncanny shadows on the panelled walls, and 
the echo of distant feet rang through the cold stone corridors, and now 
drew nearer, and now died away, and all was death-like silence, save the 
beating of one's own heart.

We are creatures of the sun, we men and women.  We love light and life.  
That is why we crowd into the towns and cities, and the country grows 
more and more deserted every year.  In the sunlight - in the daytime, 
when Nature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hill-sides 
and the deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth 
has gone to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome, 
and we get frightened, like children in a silent house.  Then we sit and 
sob, and long for the gas-lit streets, and the sound of human voices, and 
the answering throb of human life.  We feel so helpless and so little in 
the great stillness, when the dark trees rustle in the night-wind.  There 
are so many ghosts about, and their silent sighs make us feel so sad.  
Let us gather together in the great cities, and light huge bonfires of a 
million gas-jets, and shout and sing together, and feel brave.

Harris asked me if I'd ever been in the maze at Hampton Court.  He said 
he went in once to show somebody else the way.  He had studied it up in a 
map, and it was so simple that it seemed foolish - hardly worth the 
twopence charged for admission.  Harris said he thought that map must 
have been got up as a practical joke, because it wasn't a bit like the 
real thing, and only misleading.  It was a country cousin that Harris 
took in.  He said:

"We'll just go in here, so that you can say you've been, but it's very 
simple.  It's absurd to call it a maze.  You keep on taking the first 
turning to the right.  We'll just walk round for ten minutes, and then go 
and get some lunch."

They met some people soon after they had got inside, who said they had 
been there for three-quarters of an hour, and had had about enough of it.  
Harris told them they could follow him, if they liked; he was just going 
in, and then should turn round and come out again.  They said it was very 
kind of him, and fell behind, and followed.

They picked up various other people who wanted to get it over, as they 
went along, until they had absorbed all the persons in the maze.  People 
who had given up all hopes of ever getting either in or out, or of ever 
seeing their home and friends again, plucked up courage at the sight of 
Harris and his party, and joined the procession, blessing him.  Harris 
said he should judge there must have been twenty people, following him, 
in all; and one woman with a baby, who had been there all the morning, 
insisted on taking his arm, for fear of losing him.

Harris kept on turning to the right, but it seemed a long way, and his 
cousin said he supposed it was a very big maze.

"Oh, one of the largest in Europe," said Harris.

"Yes, it must be," replied the cousin, "because we've walked a good two 
miles already."

Harris began to think it rather strange himself, but he held on until, at 
last, they passed the half of a penny bun on the ground that Harris's 
cousin swore he had noticed there seven minutes ago.  Harris said: "Oh, 
impossible!" but the woman with the baby said, "Not at all," as she 
herself had taken it from the child, and thrown it down there, just 
before she met Harris.  She also added that she wished she never had met 
Harris, and expressed an opinion that he was an impostor.  That made 
Harris mad, and he produced his map, and explained his theory.

"The map may be all right enough," said one of the party, "if you know 
whereabouts in it we are now."

Harris didn't know, and suggested that the best thing to do would be to 
go back to the entrance, and begin again.  For the beginning again part 
of it there was not much enthusiasm; but with regard to the advisability 
of going back to the entrance there was complete unanimity, and so they 
turned, and trailed after Harris again, in the opposite direction.  About 
ten minutes more passed, and then they found themselves in the centre.

Harris thought at first of pretending that that was what he had been 
aiming at; but the crowd looked dangerous, and he decided to treat it as 
an accident.

Anyhow, they had got something to start from then.  They did know where 
they were, and the map was once more consulted, and the thing seemed 
simpler than ever, and off they started for the third time.

And three minutes later they were back in the centre again.

After that, they simply couldn't get anywhere else.  Whatever way they 
turned brought them back to the middle.  It became so regular at length, 
that some of the people stopped there, and waited for the others to take 
a walk round, and come back to them.  Harris drew out his map again, 
after a while, but the sight of it only infuriated the mob, and they told 
him to go and curl his hair with it.  Harris said that he couldn't help 
feeling that, to a certain extent, he had become unpopular.

They all got crazy at last, and sang out for the keeper, and the man came 
and climbed up the ladder outside, and shouted out directions to them.  
But all their heads were, by this time, in such a confused whirl that 
they were incapable of grasping anything, and so the man told them to 
stop where they were, and he would come to them.  They huddled together, 
and waited; and he climbed down, and came in.

He was a young keeper, as luck would have it, and new to the business; 
and when he got in, he couldn't find them, and he wandered about, trying 
to get to them, and then HE got lost.  They caught sight of him, every 
now and then, rushing about the other side of the hedge, and he would see 
them, and rush to get to them, and they would wait there for about five 
minutes, and then he would reappear again in exactly the same spot, and 
ask them where they had been.

They had to wait till one of the old keepers came back from his dinner 
before they got out.

Harris said he thought it was a very fine maze, so far as he was a judge; 
and we agreed that we would try to get George to go into it, on our way 
back.




CHAPTER VII.


THE RIVER IN ITS SUNDAY GARB. - DRESS ON THE RIVER. - A CHANCE FOR THE 
MEN. - ABSENCE OF TASTE IN HARRIS. - GEORGE'S BLAZER. - A DAY WITH THE 
FASHION-PLATE YOUNG LADY. - MRS. THOMAS'S TOMB. - THE MAN WHO LOVES NOT 
GRAVES AND COFFINS AND SKULLS. - HARRIS MAD. - HIS VIEWS ON GEORGE AND 
BANKS AND LEMONADE. - HE PERFORMS TRICKS.

IT was while passing through Moulsey Lock that Harris told me about his 
maze experience.  It took us some time to pass through, as we were the 
only boat, and it is a big lock.  I don't think I ever remember to have 
seen Moulsey Lock, before, with only one boat in it.  It is, I suppose, 
Boulter's not even excepted, the busiest lock on the river.

I have stood and watched it, sometimes, when you could not see any water 
at all, but only a brilliant tangle of bright blazers, and gay caps, and 
saucy hats, and many-coloured parasols, and silken rugs, and cloaks, and 
streaming ribbons, and dainty whites; when looking down into the lock 
from the quay, you might fancy it was a huge box into which flowers of 
every hue and shade had been thrown pell-mell, and lay piled up in a 
rainbow heap, that covered every corner.

On a fine Sunday it presents this appearance nearly all day long, while, 
up the stream, and down the stream, lie, waiting their turn, outside the 
gates, long lines of still more boats; and boats are drawing near and 
passing away, so that the sunny river, from the Palace up to Hampton 
Church, is dotted and decked with yellow, and blue, and orange, and 
white, and red, and pink.  All the inhabitants of Hampton and Moulsey 
dress themselves up in boating costume, and come and mouch round the lock 
with their dogs, and flirt, and smoke, and watch the boats; and, 
altogether, what with the caps and jackets of the men, the pretty 
coloured dresses of the women, the excited dogs, the moving boats, the 
white sails, the pleasant landscape, and the sparkling water, it is one 
of the gayest sights I know of near this dull old London town.

The river affords a good opportunity for dress.  For once in a way, we 
men are able to show our taste in colours, and I think we come out very 
natty, if you ask me.  I always like a little red in my things - red and 
black.  You know my hair is a sort of golden brown, rather a pretty shade 
I've been told, and a dark red matches it beautifully; and then I always 
think a light-blue necktie goes so well with it, and a pair of those 
Russian-leather shoes and a red silk handkerchief round the waist - a 
handkerchief looks so much better than a belt.

Harris always keeps to shades or mixtures of orange or yellow, but I 
don't think he is at all wise in this.  His complexion is too dark for 
yellows.  Yellows don't suit him: there can be no question about it.  I 
want him to take to blue as a background, with white or cream for relief; 
but, there! the less taste a person has in dress, the more obstinate he 
always seems to be.  It is a great pity, because he will never be a 
success as it is, while there are one or two colours in which he might 
not really look so bad, with his hat on.

George has bought some new things for this trip, and I'm rather vexed 
about them.  The blazer is loud.  I should not like George to know that I 
thought so, but there really is no other word for it.  He brought it home 
and showed it to us on Thursday evening.  We asked him what colour he 
called it, and he said he didn't know.  He didn't think there was a name 
for the colour.  The man had told him it was an Oriental design.  George 
put it on, and asked us what we thought of it.  Harris said that, as an 
object to hang over a flower-bed in early spring to frighten the birds 
away, he should respect it; but that, considered as an article of dress 
for any human being, except a Margate nigger, it made him ill.  George 
got quite huffy; but, as Harris said, if he didn't want his opinion, why 
did he ask for it?

What troubles Harris and myself, with regard to it, is that we are afraid 
it will attract attention to the boat.

Girls, also, don't look half bad in a boat, if prettily dressed.  Nothing 
is more fetching, to my thinking, than a tasteful boating costume.  But a 
"boating costume," it would be as well if all ladies would understand, 
ought to be a costume that can be worn in a boat, and not merely under a 
glass-case.  It utterly spoils an excursion if you have folk in the boat 
who are thinking all the time a good deal more of their dress than of the 
trip.  It was my misfortune once to go for a water picnic with two ladies 
of this kind.  We did have a lively time!

They were both beautifully got up - all lace and silky stuff, and 
flowers, and ribbons, and dainty shoes, and light gloves.  But they were 
dressed for a photographic studio, not for a river picnic.  They were the 
"boating costumes" of a French fashion-plate.  It was ridiculous, fooling 
about in them anywhere near real earth, air, and water.

The first thing was that they thought the boat was not clean.  We dusted 
all the seats for them, and then assured them that it was, but they 
didn't believe us.  One of them rubbed the cushion with the forefinger of 
her glove, and showed the result to the other, and they both sighed, and 
sat down, with the air of early Christian martyrs trying to make 
themselves comfortable up against the stake.  You are liable to 
occasionally splash a little when sculling, and it appeared that a drop 
of water ruined those costumes.  The mark never came out, and a stain was 
left on the dress for ever.

I was stroke.  I did my best.  I feathered some two feet high, and I 
paused at the end of each stroke to let the blades drip before returning 
them, and I picked out a smooth bit of water to drop them into again each 
time.  (Bow said, after a while, that he did not feel himself a 
sufficiently accomplished oarsman to pull with me, but that he would sit 
still, if I would allow him, and study my stroke.  He said it interested 
him.)  But, notwithstanding all this, and try as I would, I could not 
help an occasional flicker of water from going over those dresses.

The girls did not complain, but they huddled up close together, and set 
their lips firm, and every time a drop touched them, they visibly shrank 
and shuddered.  It was a noble sight to see them suffering thus in 
silence, but it unnerved me altogether.  I am too sensitive.  I got wild 
and fitful in my rowing, and splashed more and more, the harder I tried 
not to.

I gave it up at last; I said I'd row bow.  Bow thought the arrangement 
would be better too, and we changed places.  The ladies gave an 
involuntary sigh of relief when they saw me go, and quite brightened up 
for a moment.  Poor girls! they had better have put up with me.  The man 
they had got now was a jolly, light-hearted, thick-headed sort of a chap, 
with about as much sensitiveness in him as there might be in a 
Newfoundland puppy.  You might look daggers at him for an hour and he 
would not notice it, and it would not trouble him if he did.  He set a 
good, rollicking, dashing stroke that sent the spray playing all over the 
boat like a fountain, and made the whole crowd sit up straight in no 
time.  When he spread more than pint of water over one of those dresses, 
he would give a pleasant little laugh, and say:

"I beg your pardon, I'm sure;" and offer them his handkerchief to wipe it 
off with.

"Oh, it's of no consequence," the poor girls would murmur in reply, and 
covertly draw rugs and coats over themselves, and try and protect 
themselves with their lace parasols.

At lunch they had a very bad time of it.  People wanted them to sit on 
the grass, and the grass was dusty; and the tree-trunks, against which 
they were invited to lean, did not appear to have been brushed for weeks; 
so they spread their handkerchiefs on the ground and sat on those, bolt 
upright.  Somebody, in walking about with a plate of beef-steak pie, 
tripped up over a root, and sent the pie flying.  None of it went over 
them, fortunately, but the accident suggested a fresh danger to them, and 
agitated them; and, whenever anybody moved about, after that, with 
anything in his hand that could fall and make a mess, they watched that 
person with growing anxiety until he sat down again.

"Now then, you girls," said our friend Bow to them, cheerily, after it 
was all over, "come along, you've got to wash up!"

They didn't understand him at first.  When they grasped the idea, they 
said they feared they did not know how to wash up.

"Oh, I'll soon show you," he cried; "it's rare fun!  You lie down on your 
- I mean you lean over the bank, you know, and sloush the things about in 
the water."

The elder sister said that she was afraid that they hadn't got on dresses 
suited to the work.

"Oh, they'll be all right," said he light-heartedly; "tuck `em up."

And he made them do it, too.  He told them that that sort of thing was 
half the fun of a picnic.  They said it was very interesting.

Now I come to think it over, was that young man as dense-headed as we 
thought? or was he - no, impossible! there was such a simple, child-like 
expression about him!

Harris wanted to get out at Hampton Church, to go and see Mrs. Thomas's 
tomb.

"Who is Mrs. Thomas?" I asked.

"How should I know?" replied Harris.  "She's a lady that's got a funny 
tomb, and I want to see it."

I objected.  I don't know whether it is that I am built wrong, but I 
never did seem to hanker after tombstones myself.  I know that the proper 
thing to do, when you get to a village or town, is to rush off to the 
churchyard, and enjoy the graves; but it is a recreation that I always 
deny myself.  I take no interest in creeping round dim and chilly 
churches behind wheezy old men, and reading epitaphs.  Not even the sight 
of a bit of cracked brass let into a stone affords me what I call real 
happiness.

I shock respectable sextons by the imperturbability I am able to assume 
before exciting inscriptions, and by my lack of enthusiasm for the local 
family history, while my ill-concealed anxiety to get outside wounds 
their feelings.

One golden morning of a sunny day, I leant against the low stone wall 
that guarded a little village church, and I smoked, and drank in deep, 
calm gladness from the sweet, restful scene - the grey old church with 
its clustering ivy and its quaint carved wooden porch, the white lane 
winding down the hill between tall rows of elms, the thatched-roof 
cottages peeping above their trim-kept hedges, the silver river in the 
hollow, the wooded hills beyond!

It was a lovely landscape.  It was idyllic, poetical, and it inspired me.  
I felt good and noble.  I felt I didn't want to be sinful and wicked any 
more.  I would come and live here, and never do any more wrong, and lead 
a blameless, beautiful life, and have silver hair when I got old, and all 
that sort of thing.

In that moment I forgave all my friends and relations for their 
wickedness and cussedness, and I blessed them.  They did not know that I 
blessed them.  They went their abandoned way all unconscious of what I, 
far away in that peaceful village, was doing for them; but I did it, and 
I wished that I could let them know that I had done it, because I wanted 
to make them happy.  I was going on thinking away all these grand, tender 
thoughts, when my reverie was broken in upon by a shrill piping voice 
crying out:

"All right, sur, I'm a-coming, I'm a-coming.  It's all right, sur; don't 
you be in a hurry."

I looked up, and saw an old bald-headed man hobbling across the 
churchyard towards me, carrying a huge bunch of keys in his hand that 
shook and jingled at every step.

I motioned him away with silent dignity, but he still advanced, 
screeching out the while:

"I'm a-coming, sur, I'm a-coming.  I'm a little lame.  I ain't as spry as 
I used to be.  This way, sur."

"Go away, you miserable old man," I said.

"I've come as soon as I could, sur," he replied.  "My missis never see 
you till just this minute.  You follow me, sur."

"Go away," I repeated; "leave me before I get over the wall, and slay 
you."

He seemed surprised.

"Don't you want to see the tombs?" he said.

"No," I answered, "I don't.  I want to stop here, leaning up against this 
gritty old wall.  Go away, and don't disturb me.  I am chock full of 
beautiful and noble thoughts, and I want to stop like it, because it 
feels nice and good.  Don't you come fooling about, making me mad, 
chivying away all my better feelings with this silly tombstone nonsense 
of yours.  Go away, and get somebody to bury you cheap, and I'll pay half 
the expense."

He was bewildered for a moment.  He rubbed his eyes, and looked hard at 
me.  I seemed human enough on the outside: he couldn't make it out.

He said:

"Yuise a stranger in these parts?  You don't live here?"

"No," I said, "I don't.  YOU wouldn't if I did."

"Well then," he said, "you want to see the tombs - graves - folks been 
buried, you know  - coffins!"

"You are an untruther," I replied, getting roused; "I do not want to see 
tombs - not your tombs.  Why should I?  We have graves of our own, our 
family has.  Why my uncle Podger has a tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery, 
that is the pride of all that country-side; and my grandfather's vault at 
Bow is capable of accommodating eight visitors, while my great-aunt Susan 
has a brick grave in Finchley Churchyard, with a headstone with a coffee-
pot sort of thing in bas-relief upon it, and a six-inch best white stone 
coping all the way round, that cost pounds.  When I want graves, it is to 
those places that I go and revel.  I do not want other folk's.  When you 
yourself are buried, I will come and see yours.  That is all I can do for 
you."

He burst into tears.  He said that one of the tombs had a bit of stone 
upon the top of it that had been said by some to be probably part of the 
remains of the figure of a man, and that another had some words, carved 
upon it, that nobody had ever been able to decipher.

I still remained obdurate, and, in broken-hearted tones, he said:

"Well, won't you come and see the memorial window?"

I would not even see that, so he fired his last shot.  He drew near, and 
whispered hoarsely:

"I've got a couple of skulls down in the crypt," he said; "come and see 
those.  Oh, do come and see the skulls!  You are a young man out for a 
holiday, and you want to enjoy yourself.  Come and see the skulls!"

Then I turned and fled, and as I sped I heard him calling to me:

"Oh, come and see the skulls; come back and see the skulls!"

Harris, however, revels in tombs, and graves, and epitaphs, and 
monumental inscriptions, and the thought of not seeing Mrs. Thomas's 
grave made him crazy.  He said he had looked forward to seeing Mrs. 
Thomas's grave from the first moment that the trip was proposed - said he 
wouldn't have joined if it hadn't been for the idea of seeing Mrs. 
Thomas's tomb.

I reminded him of George, and how we had to get the boat up to Shepperton 
by five o'clock to meet him, and then he went for George.  Why was George 
to fool about all day, and leave us to lug this lumbering old top-heavy 
barge up and down the river by ourselves to meet him?  Why couldn't 
George come and do some work?  Why couldn't he have got the day off, and 
come down with us?  Bank be blowed!  What good was he at the bank?

"I never see him doing any work there," continued Harris, "whenever I go 
in.  He sits behind a bit of glass all day, trying to look as if he was 
doing something.  What's the good of a man behind a bit of glass?  I have 
to work for my living.  Why can't he work.  What use is he there, and 
what's the good of their banks?  They take your money, and then, when you 
draw a cheque, they send it back smeared all over with `No effects,' 
`Refer to drawer.'  What's the good of that?  That's the sort of trick 
they served me twice last week.  I'm not going to stand it much longer.  
I shall withdraw my account.  If he was here, we could go and see that 
tomb.  I don't believe he's at the bank at all.  He's larking about 
somewhere, that's what he's doing, leaving us to do all the work.  I'm 
going to get out, and have a drink."

I pointed out to him that we were miles away from a pub.; and then he 
went on about the river, and what was the good of the river, and was 
everyone who came on the river to die of thirst?

It is always best to let Harris have his head when he gets like this.  
Then he pumps himself out, and is quiet afterwards.

I reminded him that there was concentrated lemonade in the hamper, and a 
gallon-jar of water in the nose of the boat, and that the two only wanted 
mixing to make a cool and refreshing beverage.

Then he flew off about lemonade, and "such-like Sunday-school slops," as 
he termed them, ginger-beer, raspberry syrup, &c., &c.  He said they all 
produced dyspepsia, and ruined body and soul alike, and were the cause of 
half the crime in England.

He said he must drink something, however, and climbed upon the seat, and 
leant over to get the bottle.  It was right at the bottom of the hamper, 
and seemed difficult to find, and he had to lean over further and 
further, and, in trying to steer at the same time, from a topsy-turvy 
point of view, he pulled the wrong line, and sent the boat into the bank, 
and the shock upset him, and he dived down right into the hamper, and 
stood there on his head, holding on to the sides of the boat like grim 
death, his legs sticking up into the air.  He dared not move for fear of 
going over, and had to stay there till I could get hold of his legs, and 
haul him back, and that made him madder than ever.




CHAPTER VIII.


BLACKMAILING. - THE PROPER COURSE TO PURSUE. - SELFISH BOORISHNESS OF 
RIVER-SIDE LANDOWNER. - "NOTICE" BOARDS. - UNCHRISTIANLIKE FEELINGS OF 
HARRIS. - HOW HARRIS SINGS A COMIC SONG. - A HIGH-CLASS PARTY. - SHAMEFUL 
CONDUCT OF TWO ABANDONED YOUNG MEN. - SOME USELESS INFORMATION. - GEORGE 
BUYS A BANJO.

WE stopped under the willows by Kempton Park, and lunched.  It is a 
pretty little spot there: a pleasant grass plateau, running along by the 
water's edge, and overhung by willows.  We had just commenced the third 
course - the bread and jam - when a gentleman in shirt-sleeves and a 
short pipe came along, and wanted to know if we knew that we were 
trespassing.  We said we hadn't given the matter sufficient consideration 
as yet to enable us to arrive at a definite conclusion on that point, but 
that, if he assured us on his word as a gentleman that we WERE 
trespassing, we would, without further hesitation, believe it.

He gave us the required assurance, and we thanked him, but he still hung 
about, and seemed to be dissatisfied, so we asked him if there was 
anything further that we could do for him; and Harris, who is of a chummy 
disposition, offered him a bit of bread and jam.

I fancy he must have belonged to some society sworn to abstain from bread 
and jam; for he declined it quite gruffly, as if he were vexed at being 
tempted with it, and he added that it was his duty to turn us off.

Harris said that if it was a duty it ought to be done, and asked the man 
what was his idea with regard to the best means for accomplishing it.  
Harris is what you would call a well-made man of about number one size, 
and looks hard and bony, and the man measured him up and down, and said 
he would go and consult his master, and then come back and chuck us both 
into the river.

Of course, we never saw him any more, and, of course, all he really 
wanted was a shilling.  There are a certain number of riverside roughs 
who make quite an income, during the summer, by slouching about the banks 
and blackmailing weak-minded noodles in this way.  They represent 
themselves as sent by the proprietor.  The proper course to pursue is to 
offer your name and address, and leave the owner, if he really has 
anything to do with the matter, to summon you, and prove what damage you 
have done to his land by sitting down on a bit of it.  But the majority 
of people are so intensely lazy and timid, that they prefer to encourage 
the imposition by giving in to it rather than put an end to it by the 
exertion of a little firmness.

Where it is really the owners that are to blame, they ought to be shown 
up.  The selfishness of the riparian proprietor grows with every year.  
If these men had their way they would close the river Thames altogether.  
They actually do this along the minor tributary streams and in the 
backwaters.  They drive posts into the bed of the stream, and draw chains 
across from bank to bank, and nail huge notice-boards on every tree.  The 
sight of those notice-boards rouses every evil instinct in my nature.  I 
feel I want to tear each one down, and hammer it over the head of the man 
who put it up, until I have killed him, and then I would bury him, and 
put the board up over the grave as a tombstone.

I mentioned these feelings of mine to Harris, and he said he had them 
worse than that.  He said he not only felt he wanted to kill the man who 
caused the board to be put up, but that he should like to slaughter the 
whole of his family and all his friends and relations, and then burn down 
his house.  This seemed to me to be going too far, and I said so to 
Harris; but he answered:

"Not a bit of it.  Serve `em all jolly well right, and I'd go and sing 
comic songs on the ruins."

I was vexed to hear Harris go on in this blood-thirsty strain.  We never 
ought to allow our instincts of justice to degenerate into mere 
vindictiveness.  It was a long while before I could get Harris to take a 
more Christian view of the subject, but I succeeded at last, and he 
promised me that he would spare the friends and relations at all events, 
and would not sing comic songs on the ruins.

You have never heard Harris sing a comic song, or you would understand 
the service I had rendered to mankind.  It is one of Harris's fixed ideas 
that he CAN sing a comic song; the fixed idea, on the contrary, among 
those of Harris's friends who have heard him try, is that he CAN'T and 
never will be able to, and that he ought not to be allowed to try.

When Harris is at a party, and is asked to sing, he replies: "Well, I can 
only sing a COMIC song, you know;" and he says it in a tone that implies 
that his singing of THAT, however, is a thing that you ought to hear 
once, and then die.

"Oh, that IS nice," says the hostess.  "Do sing one, Mr. Harris;" and 
Harris gets up, and makes for the piano, with the beaming cheeriness of a 
generous-minded man who is just about to give somebody something.

"Now, silence, please, everybody" says the hostess, turning round; "Mr. 
Harris is going to sing a comic song!"

"Oh, how jolly!" they murmur; and they hurry in from the conservatory, 
and come up from the stairs, and go and fetch each other from all over 
the house, and crowd into the drawing-room, and sit round, all smirking 
in anticipation.

Then Harris begins.

Well, you don't look for much of a voice in a comic song.  You don't 
expect correct phrasing or vocalization.  You don't mind if a man does 
find out, when in the middle of a note, that he is too high, and comes 
down with a jerk.  You don't bother about time.  You don't mind a man 
being two bars in front of the accompaniment, and easing up in the middle 
of a line to argue it out with the pianist, and then starting the verse 
afresh.  But you do expect the words.

You don't expect a man to never remember more than the first three lines 
of the first verse, and to keep on repeating these until it is time to 
begin the chorus.  You don't expect a man to break off in the middle of a 
line, and snigger, and say, it's very funny, but he's blest if he can 
think of the rest of it, and then try and make it up for himself, and, 
afterwards, suddenly recollect it, when he has got to an entirely 
different part of the song, and break off, without a word of warning, to 
go back and let you have it then and there.  You don't - well, I will 
just give you an idea of Harris's comic singing, and then you can judge 
of it for yourself.

HARRIS (STANDING UP IN FRONT OF PIANO AND ADDRESSING THE EXPECTANT MOB): 
"I'm afraid it's a very old thing, you know.  I expect you all know it, 
you know.  But it's the only thing I know.  It's the Judge's song out of 
PINAFORE - no, I don't mean PINAFORE - I mean - you know what I mean - 
the other thing, you know.  You must all join in the chorus, you know."

[Murmurs of delight and anxiety to join in the chorus.  Brilliant 
performance of prelude to the Judge's song in "Trial by Jury" by nervous 
Pianist.  Moment arrives for Harris to join in.  Harris takes no notice 
of it.  Nervous pianist commences prelude over again, and Harris, 
commencing singing at the same time, dashes off the first two lines of 
the First Lord's song out of "Pinafore."  Nervous pianist tries to push 
on with prelude, gives it up, and tries to follow Harris with 
accompaniment to Judge's song out "Trial by Jury," finds that doesn't 
answer, and tries to recollect what he is doing, and where he is, feels 
his mind giving way, and stops short.]

HARRIS (WITH KINDLY ENCOURAGEMENT): "It's all right.  You're doing it 
very well, indeed - go on."

NERVOUS PIANIST: "I'm afraid there's a mistake somewhere.  What are you 
singing?"

HARRIS (PROMPTLY): "Why the Judge's song out of Trial by Jury.  Don't you 
know it?"

SOME FRIEND OF HARRIS'S (FROM THE BACK OF THE ROOM): "No, you're not, you 
chuckle-head, you're singing the Admiral's song from PINAFORE."

[Long argument between Harris and Harris's friend as to what Harris is 
really singing.  Friend finally suggests that it doesn't matter what 
Harris is singing so long as Harris gets on and sings it, and Harris, 
with an evident sense of injustice rankling inside him, requests pianist 
to begin again.  Pianist, thereupon, starts prelude to the Admiral's 
song, and Harris, seizing what he considers to be a favourable opening in 
the music, begins.]

HARRIS:

" `When I was young and called to the Bar.' "

[GENERAL ROAR OF LAUGHTER, TAKEN BY HARRIS AS A COMPLIMENT.  PIANIST, 
THINKING OF HIS WIFE AND FAMILY, GIVES UP THE UNEQUAL CONTEST AND 
RETIRES; HIS PLACE BEING TAKEN BY A STRONGER-NERVED MAN.

THE NEW PIANIST (CHEERILY): "Now then, old man, you start off, and I'll 
follow.  We won't bother about any prelude."

HARRIS (UPON WHOM THE EXPLANATION OF MATTERS HAS SLOWLY DAWNED - 
LAUGHING): "By Jove!  I beg your pardon.  Of course - I've been mixing up 
the two songs.  It was Jenkins confused me, you know.  Now then.

[SINGING; HIS VOICE APPEARING TO COME FROM THE CELLAR, AND SUGGESTING THE 
FIRST LOW WARNINGS OF AN APPROACHING EARTHQUAKE.

" `When I was young I served a term
As office-boy to an attorney's firm.'

(Aside to pianist): "It is too low, old man; we'll have that over again, 
if you don't mind."

[SINGS FIRST TWO LINES OVER AGAIN, IN A HIGH FALSETTO THIS TIME.  GREAT 
SURPRISE ON THE PART OF THE AUDIENCE.  NERVOUS OLD LADY NEAR THE FIRE 
BEGINS TO CRY, AND HAS TO BE LED OUT.]

HARRIS (continuing):

"I swept the windows and I swept the door,
And I - `

No - no, I cleaned the windows of the big front door.  And I polished up 
the floor - no, dash it - I beg your pardon - funny thing, I can't think 
of that line.  And I - and I - Oh, well, we'll get on to the chorus, and 
chance it (SINGS):

`And I diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-de,
Till now I am the ruler of the Queen's navee.'

Now then, chorus - it is the last two lines repeated, you know.

GENERAL CHORUS:

"And he diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-dee'd,
Till now he is the ruler of the Queen's navee."

And Harris never sees what an ass he is making of himself, and how he is 
annoying a lot of people who never did him any harm.  He honestly 
imagines that he has given them a treat, and says he will sing another 
comic song after supper.

Speaking of comic songs and parties, reminds me of a rather curious 
incident at which I once assisted; which, as it throws much light upon 
the inner mental working of human nature in general, ought, I think, to 
be recorded in these pages.

We were a fashionable and highly cultured party.  We had on our best 
clothes, and we talked pretty, and were very happy - all except two young 
fellows, students, just returned from Germany, commonplace young men, who 
seemed restless and uncomfortable, as if they found the proceedings slow.  
The truth was, we were too clever for them.  Our brilliant but polished 
conversation, and our high-class tastes, were beyond them.  They were out 
of place, among us.  They never ought to have been there at all.  
Everybody agreed upon that, later on.

We played MORCEAUX from the old German masters.  We discussed philosophy 
and ethics.  We flirted with graceful dignity.  We were even humorous - 
in a high-class way.

Somebody recited a French poem after supper, and we said it was 
beautiful; and then a lady sang a sentimental ballad in Spanish, and it 
made one or two of us weep - it was so pathetic.

And then those two young men got up, and asked us if we had ever heard 
Herr Slossenn Boschen (who had just arrived, and was then down in the 
supper-room) sing his great German comic song.

None of us had heard it, that we could remember.

The young men said it was the funniest song that had ever been written, 
and that, if we liked, they would get Herr Slossenn Boschen, whom they 
knew very well, to sing it.  They said it was so funny that, when Herr 
Slossenn Boschen had sung it once before the German Emperor, he (the 
German Emperor) had had to be carried off to bed.

They said nobody could sing it like Herr Slossenn Boschen; he was so 
intensely serious all through it that you might fancy he was reciting a 
tragedy, and that, of course, made it all the funnier.  They said he 
never once suggested by his tone or manner that he was singing anything 
funny - that would spoil it.  It was his air of seriousness, almost of 
pathos, that made it so irresistibly amusing.

We said we yearned to hear it, that we wanted a good laugh; and they went 
downstairs, and fetched Herr Slossenn Boschen.

He appeared to be quite pleased to sing it, for he came up at once, and 
sat down to the piano without another word.

"Oh, it will amuse you.  You will laugh," whispered the two young men, as 
they passed through the room, and took up an unobtrusive position behind 
the Professor's back.

Herr Slossenn Boschen accompanied himself.  The prelude did not suggest a 
comic song exactly.  It was a weird, soulful air.  It quite made one's 
flesh creep; but we murmured to one another that it was the German 
method, and prepared to enjoy it.

I don't understand German myself.  I learned it at school, but forgot 
every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better 
ever since.  Still, I did not want the people there to guess my 
ignorance; so I hit upon what I thought to be rather a good idea.  I kept 
my eye on the two young students, and followed them.  When they tittered, 
I tittered; when they roared, I roared; and I also threw in a little 
snigger all by myself now and then, as if I had seen a bit of humour that 
had escaped the others.  I considered this particularly artful on my 
part.

I noticed, as the song progressed, that a good many other people seemed 
to have their eye fixed on the two young men, as well as myself.  These 
other people also tittered when the young men tittered, and roared when 
the young men roared; and, as the two young men tittered and roared and 
exploded with laughter pretty continuously all through the song, it went 
exceedingly well.

And yet that German Professor did not seem happy.  At first, when we 
began to laugh, the expression of his face was one of intense surprise, 
as if laughter were the very last thing he had expected to be greeted 
with.  We thought this very funny: we said his earnest manner was half 
the humour.  The slightest hint on his part that he knew how funny he was 
would have completely ruined it all.  As we continued to laugh, his 
surprise gave way to an air of annoyance and indignation, and he scowled 
fiercely round upon us all (except upon the two young men who, being 
behind him, he could not see).  That sent us into convulsions.  We told 
each other that it would be the death of us, this thing.  The words 
alone, we said, were enough to send us into fits, but added to his mock 
seriousness - oh, it was too much!

In the last verse, he surpassed himself.  He glowered round upon us with 
a look of such concentrated ferocity that, but for our being forewarned 
as to the German method of comic singing, we should have been nervous; 
and he threw such a wailing note of agony into the weird music that, if 
we had not known it was a funny song, we might have wept.

He finished amid a perfect shriek of laughter.  We said it was the 
funniest thing we had ever heard in all our lives.  We said how strange 
it was that, in the face of things like these, there should be a popular 
notion that the Germans hadn't any sense of humour.  And we asked the 
Professor why he didn't translate the song into English, so that the 
common people could understand it, and hear what a real comic song was 
like.

Then Herr Slossenn Boschen got up, and went on awful.  He swore at us in 
German (which I should judge to be a singularly effective language for 
that purpose), and he danced, and shook his fists, and called us all the 
English he knew.  He said he had never been so insulted in all his life.

It appeared that the song was not a comic song at all.  It was about a 
young girl who lived in the Hartz Mountains, and who had given up her 
life to save her lover's soul; and he died, and met her spirit in the 
air; and then, in the last verse, he jilted her spirit, and went on with 
another spirit - I'm not quite sure of the details, but it was something 
very sad, I know.  Herr Boschen said he had sung it once before the 
German Emperor, and he (the German Emperor) had sobbed like a little 
child.  He (Herr Boschen) said it was generally acknowledged to be one of 
the most tragic and pathetic songs in the German language.

It was a trying situation for us - very trying.  There seemed to be no 
answer.  We looked around for the two young men who had done this thing, 
but they had left the house in an unostentatious manner immediately after 
the end of the song.

That was the end of that party.  I never saw a party break up so quietly, 
and with so little fuss.  We never said good-night even to one another.  
We came downstairs one at a time, walking softly, and keeping the shady 
side.  We asked the servant for our hats and coats in whispers, and 
opened the door for ourselves, and slipped out, and got round the corner 
quickly, avoiding each other as much as possible.

I have never taken much interest in German songs since then.

We reached Sunbury Lock at half-past three.  The river is sweetly pretty 
just there before you come to the gates, and the backwater is charming; 
but don't attempt to row up it.

I tried to do so once.  I was sculling, and asked the fellows who were 
steering if they thought it could be done, and they said, oh, yes, they 
thought so, if I pulled hard.  We were just under the little foot-bridge 
that crosses it between the two weirs, when they said this, and I bent 
down over the sculls, and set myself up, and pulled.

I pulled splendidly.  I got well into a steady rhythmical swing.  I put 
my arms, and my legs, and my back into it.  I set myself a good, quick, 
dashing stroke, and worked in really grand style.  My two friends said it 
was a pleasure to watch me.  At the end of five minutes, I thought we 
ought to be pretty near the weir, and I looked up.  We were under the 
bridge, in exactly the same spot that we were when I began, and there 
were those two idiots, injuring themselves by violent laughing.  I had 
been grinding away like mad to keep that boat stuck still under that 
bridge.  I let other people pull up backwaters against strong streams 
now.

We sculled up to Walton, a rather large place for a riverside town.  As 
with all riverside places, only the tiniest corner of it comes down to 
the water, so that from the boat you might fancy it was a village of some 
half-dozen houses, all told.  Windsor and Abingdon are the only towns 
between London and Oxford that you can really see anything of from the 
stream.  All the others hide round corners, and merely peep at the river 
down one street: my thanks to them for being so considerate, and leaving 
the river-banks to woods and fields and water-works.

Even Reading, though it does its best to spoil and sully and make hideous 
as much of the river as it can reach, is good-natured enough to keep its 
ugly face a good deal out of sight.

Caesar, of course, had a little place at Walton - a camp, or an 
entrenchment, or something of that sort.  Caesar was a regular up-river 
man.  Also Queen Elizabeth, she was there, too.  You can never get away 
from that woman, go where you will.  Cromwell and Bradshaw (not the guide 
man, but the King Charles's head man) likewise sojourned here.  They must 
have been quite a pleasant little party, altogether.

There is an iron "scold's bridle" in Walton Church.  They used these 
things in ancient days for curbing women's tongues.  They have given up 
the attempt now.  I suppose iron was getting scarce, and nothing else 
would be strong enough.

There are also tombs of note in the church, and I was afraid I should 
never get Harris past them; but he didn't seem to think of them, and we 
went on.  Above the bridge the river winds tremendously.  This makes it 
look picturesque; but it irritates you from a towing or sculling point of 
view, and causes argument between the man who is pulling and the man who 
is steering.

You pass Oatlands Park on the right bank here.  It is a famous old place.  
Henry VIII. stole it from some one or the other, I forget whom now, and 
lived in it.  There is a grotto in the park which you can see for a fee, 
and which is supposed to be very wonderful; but I cannot see much in it 
myself.  The late Duchess of York, who lived at Oatlands, was very fond 
of dogs, and kept an immense number.  She had a special graveyard made, 
in which to bury them when they died, and there they lie, about fifty of 
them, with a tombstone over each, and an epitaph inscribed thereon.

Well, I dare say they deserve it quite as much as the average Christian 
does.

At "Corway Stakes" - the first bend above Walton Bridge - was fought a 
battle between Caesar and Cassivelaunus.  Cassivelaunus had prepared the 
river for Caesar, by planting it full of stakes (and had, no doubt, put 
up a notice-board).  But Caesar crossed in spite of this.  You couldn't 
choke Caesar off that river.  He is the sort of man we want round the 
backwaters now.

Halliford and Shepperton are both pretty little spots where they touch 
the river; but there is nothing remarkable about either of them.  There 
is a tomb in Shepperton churchyard, however, with a poem on it, and I was 
nervous lest Harris should want to get out and fool round it.  I saw him 
fix a longing eye on the landing-stage as we drew near it, so I managed, 
by an adroit movement, to jerk his cap into the water, and in the 
excitement of recovering that, and his indignation at my clumsiness, he 
forgot all about his beloved graves.

At Weybridge, the Wey (a pretty little stream, navigable for small boats 
up to Guildford, and one which I have always been making up my mind to 
explore, and never have), the Bourne, and the Basingstoke Canal all enter 
the Thames together.  The lock is just opposite the town, and the first 
thing that we saw, when we came in view of it, was George's blazer on one 
of the lock gates, closer inspection showing that George was inside it.

Montmorency set up a furious barking, I shrieked, Harris roared; George 
waved his hat, and yelled back.  The lock-keeper rushed out with a drag, 
under the impression that somebody had fallen into the lock, and appeared 
annoyed at finding that no one had.

George had rather a curious oilskin-covered parcel in his hand.  It was 
round and flat at one end, with a long straight handle sticking out of 
it.

"What's that?" said Harris - "a frying-pan?"

"No," said George, with a strange, wild look glittering in his eyes; 
"they are all the rage this season; everybody has got them up the river.  
It's a banjo."

"I never knew you played the banjo!" cried Harris and I, in one breath.

"Not exactly," replied George: "but it's very easy, they tell me; and 
I've got the instruction book!"




CHAPTER IX.


GEORGE IS INTRODUCED TO WORK. - HEATHENISH INSTINCTS OF TOW-LINES. - 
UNGRATEFUL CONDUCT OF A DOUBLE-SCULLING SKIFF. - TOWERS AND TOWED. - A 
USE DISCOVERED FOR LOVERS. - STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF AN ELDERLY LADY. - 
MUCH HASTE, LESS SPEED. - BEING TOWED BY GIRLS: EXCITING SENSATION. - THE 
MISSING LOCK OR THE HAUNTED RIVER. - MUSIC. - SAVED!

WE made George work, now we had got him.  He did not want to work, of 
course; that goes without saying.  He had had a hard time in the City, so 
he explained.  Harris, who is callous in his nature, and not prone to 
pity, said:

"Ah! and now you are going to have a hard time on the river for a change; 
change is good for everyone.  Out you get!"

He could not in conscience - not even George's conscience - object, 
though he did suggest that, perhaps, it would be better for him to stop 
in the boat, and get tea ready, while Harris and I towed, because getting 
tea was such a worrying work, and Harris and I looked tired.  The only 
reply we made to this, however, was to pass him over the tow-line, and he 
took it, and stepped out.

There is something very strange and unaccountable about a tow-line.  You 
roll it up with as much patience and care as you would take to fold up a 
new pair of trousers, and five minutes afterwards, when you pick it up, 
it is one ghastly, soul-revolting tangle.

I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if you took an 
average tow-line, and stretched it out straight across the middle of a 
field, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that, when you 
looked round again, you would find that it had got itself altogether in a 
heap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself up, and tied 
itself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all loops; and it 
would take you a good half-hour, sitting down there on the grass and 
swearing all the while, to disentangle it again.

That is my opinion of tow-lines in general.  Of course, there may be 
honourable exceptions; I do not say that there are not.  There may be 
tow-lines that are a credit to their profession - conscientious, 
respectable tow-lines - tow-lines that do not imagine they are crochet-
work, and try to knit themselves up into antimacassars the instant they 
are left to themselves.  I say there MAY be such tow-lines; I sincerely 
hope there are.  But I have not met with them.

This tow-line I had taken in myself just before we had got to the lock.  
I would not let Harris touch it, because he is careless.  I had looped it 
round slowly and cautiously, and tied it up in the middle, and folded it 
in two, and laid it down gently at the bottom of the boat.  Harris had 
lifted it up scientifically, and had put it into George's hand.  George 
had taken it firmly, and held it away from him, and had begun to unravel 
it as if he were taking the swaddling clothes off a new-born infant; and, 
before he had unwound a dozen yards, the thing was more like a badly-made 
door-mat than anything else.

It is always the same, and the same sort of thing always goes on in 
connection with it.  The man on the bank, who is trying to disentangle 
it, thinks all the fault lies with the man who rolled it up; and when a 
man up the river thinks a thing, he says it.

"What have you been trying to do with it, make a fishing-net of it?  
You've made a nice mess you have; why couldn't you wind it up properly, 
you silly dummy?" he grunts from time to time as he struggles wildly with 
it, and lays it out flat on the tow-path, and runs round and round it, 
trying to find the end.

On the other hand, the man who wound it up thinks the whole cause of the 
muddle rests with the man who is trying to unwind it.

"It was all right when you took it!" he exclaims indignantly.  "Why don't 
you think what you are doing?  You go about things in such a slap-dash 
style.  You'd get a scaffolding pole entangled you would!"

And they feel so angry with one another that they would like to hang each 
other with the thing.

Ten minutes go by, and the first man gives a yell and goes mad, and 
dances on the rope, and tries to pull it straight by seizing hold of the 
first piece that comes to his hand and hauling at it.  Of course, this 
only gets it into a tighter tangle than ever.  Then the second man climbs 
out of the boat and comes to help him, and they get in each other's way, 
and hinder one another.  They both get hold of the same bit of line, and 
pull at it in opposite directions, and wonder where it is caught.  In the 
end, they do get it clear, and then turn round and find that the boat has 
drifted off, and is making straight for the weir.

This really happened once to my own knowledge.  It was up by Boveney, one 
rather windy morning.  We were pulling down stream, and, as we came round 
the bend, we noticed a couple of men on the bank.  They were looking at 
each other with as bewildered and helplessly miserable expression as I 
have ever witnessed on any human countenance before or since, and they 
held a long tow-line between them.  It was clear that something had 
happened, so we eased up and asked them what was the matter.

"Why, our boat's gone off!" they replied in an indignant tone.  "We just 
got out to disentangle the tow-line, and when we looked round, it was 
gone!"

And they seemed hurt at what they evidently regarded as a mean and 
ungrateful act on the part of the boat.

We found the truant for them half a mile further down, held by some 
rushes, and we brought it back to them.  I bet they did not give that 
boat another chance for a week.

I shall never forget the picture of those two men walking up and down the 
bank with a tow-line, looking for their boat.

One sees a good many funny incidents up the river in connection with 
towing.  One of the most common is the sight of a couple of towers, 
walking briskly along, deep in an animated discussion, while the man in 
the boat, a hundred yards behind them, is vainly shrieking to them to 
stop, and making frantic signs of distress with a scull.  Something has 
gone wrong; the rudder has come off, or the boat-hook has slipped 
overboard, or his hat has dropped into the water and is floating rapidly 
down stream.

He calls to them to stop, quite gently and politely at first.

"Hi! stop a minute, will you?" he shouts cheerily.  "I've dropped my hat 
over-board."

Then: "Hi!  Tom - Dick! can't you hear?" not quite so affably this time.

Then: "Hi!  Confound YOU, you dunder-headed idiots!  Hi! stop!  Oh you - 
!"

After that he springs up, and dances about, and roars himself red in the 
face, and curses everything he knows.  And the small boys on the bank 
stop and jeer at him, and pitch stones at him as he is pulled along past 
them, at the rate of four miles an hour, and can't get out.

Much of this sort of trouble would be saved if those who are towing would 
keep remembering that they are towing, and give a pretty frequent look 
round to see how their man is getting on.  It is best to let one person 
tow.  When two are doing it, they get chattering, and forget, and the 
boat itself, offering, as it does, but little resistance, is of no real 
service in reminding them of the fact.

As an example of how utterly oblivious a pair of towers can be to their 
work, George told us, later on in the evening, when we were discussing 
the subject after supper, of a very curious instance.

He and three other men, so he said, were sculling a very heavily laden 
boat up from Maidenhead one evening, and a little above Cookham lock they 
noticed a fellow and a girl, walking along the towpath, both deep in an 
apparently interesting and absorbing conversation.  They were carrying a 
boat-hook between them, and, attached to the boat-hook was a tow-line, 
which trailed behind them, its end in the water.  No boat was near, no 
boat was in sight.  There must have been a boat attached to that tow-line 
at some time or other, that was certain; but what had become of it, what 
ghastly fate had overtaken it, and those who had been left in it, was 
buried in mystery.  Whatever the accident may have been, however, it had 
in no way disturbed the young lady and gentleman, who were towing.  They 
had the boat-hook and they had the line, and that seemed to be all that 
they thought necessary to their work.

George was about to call out and wake them up, but, at that moment, a 
bright idea flashed across him, and he didn't.  He got the hitcher 
instead, and reached over, and drew in the end of the tow-line; and they 
made a loop in it, and put it over their mast, and then they tidied up 
the sculls, and went and sat down in the stern, and lit their pipes.

And that young man and young woman towed those four hulking chaps and a 
heavy boat up to Marlow.

George said he never saw so much thoughtful sadness concentrated into one 
glance before, as when, at the lock, that young couple grasped the idea 
that, for the last two miles, they had been towing the wrong boat.  
George fancied that, if it had not been for the restraining influence of 
the sweet woman at his side, the young man might have given way to 
violent language.

The maiden was the first to recover from her surprise, and, when she did, 
she clasped her hands, and said, wildly:

"Oh, Henry, then WHERE is auntie?"

"Did they ever recover the old lady?" asked Harris.

George replied he did not know.

Another example of the dangerous want of sympathy between tower and towed 
was witnessed by George and myself once up near Walton.  It was where the 
tow-path shelves gently down into the water, and we were camping on the 
opposite bank, noticing things in general.  By-and-by a small boat came 
in sight, towed through the water at a tremendous pace by a powerful 
barge horse, on which sat a very small boy.  Scattered about the boat, in 
dreamy and reposeful attitudes, lay five fellows, the man who was 
steering having a particularly restful appearance.

"I should like to see him pull the wrong line," murmured George, as they 
passed.  And at that precise moment the man did it, and the boat rushed 
up the bank with a noise like the ripping up of forty thousand linen 
sheets.  Two men, a hamper, and three oars immediately left the boat on 
the larboard side, and reclined on the bank, and one and a half moments 
afterwards, two other men disembarked from the starboard, and sat down 
among boat-hooks and sails and carpet-bags and bottles.  The last man 
went on twenty yards further, and then got out on his head.

This seemed to sort of lighten the boat, and it went on much easier, the 
small boy shouting at the top of his voice, and urging his steed into a 
gallop.  The fellows sat up and stared at one another.  It was some 
seconds before they realised what had happened to them, but, when they 
did, they began to shout lustily for the boy to stop.  He, however, was 
too much occupied with the horse to hear them, and we watched them, 
flying after him, until the distance hid them from view.

I cannot say I was sorry at their mishap.  Indeed, I only wish that all 
the young fools who have their boats towed in this fashion - and plenty 
do - could meet with similar misfortunes.  Besides the risk they run 
themselves, they become a danger and an annoyance to every other boat 
they pass.  Going at the pace they do, it is impossible for them to get 
out of anybody else's way, or for anybody else to get out of theirs.  
Their line gets hitched across your mast, and overturns you, or it 
catches somebody in the boat, and either throws them into the water, or 
cuts their face open.  The best plan is to stand your ground, and be 
prepared to keep them off with the butt-end of a mast.

Of all experiences in connection with towing, the most exciting is being 
towed by girls.  It is a sensation that nobody ought to miss.  It takes 
three girls to tow always; two hold the rope, and the other one runs 
round and round, and giggles.  They generally begin by getting themselves 
tied up.  They get the line round their legs, and have to sit down on the 
path and undo each other, and then they twist it round their necks, and 
are nearly strangled.  They fix it straight, however, at last, and start 
off at a run, pulling the boat along at quite a dangerous pace.  At the 
end of a hundred yards they are naturally breathless, and suddenly stop, 
and all sit down on the grass and laugh, and your boat drifts out to mid-
stream and turns round, before you know what has happened, or can get 
hold of a scull.  Then they stand up, and are surprised.

"Oh, look!" they say; "he's gone right out into the middle."

They pull on pretty steadily for a bit, after this, and then it all at 
once occurs to one of them that she will pin up her frock, and they ease 
up for the purpose, and the boat runs aground.

You jump up, and push it off, and you shout to them not to stop.

"Yes.  What's the matter?" they shout back.

"Don't stop," you roar.

"Don't what?"

"Don't stop - go on - go on!"

"Go back, Emily, and see what it is they want," says one; and Emily comes 
back, and asks what it is.

"What do you want?" she says; "anything happened?"

" No," you reply, "it's all right; only go on, you know - don't stop."

"Why not?"

"Why, we can't steer, if you keep stopping.  You must keep some way on 
the boat."

"Keep some what?"

"Some way - you must keep the boat moving."

"Oh, all right, I'll tell `em.  Are we doing it all right?"

"Oh, yes, very nicely, indeed, only don't stop."

"It doesn't seem difficult at all.  I thought it was so hard."

"Oh, no, it's simple enough.  You want to keep on steady at it, that's 
all."

"I see.  Give me out my red shawl, it's under the cushion."

You find the shawl, and hand it out, and by this time another one has 
come back and thinks she will have hers too, and they take Mary's on 
chance, and Mary does not want it, so they bring it back and have a 
pocket-comb instead.  It is about twenty minutes before they get off 
again, and, at the next corner, they see a cow, and you have to leave the 
boat to chivy the cow out of their way.

There is never a dull moment in the boat while girls are towing it.

George got the line right after a while, and towed us steadily on to 
Penton Hook.  There we discussed the important question of camping.  We 
had decided to sleep on board that night, and we had either to lay up 
just about there, or go on past Staines.  It seemed early to think about 
shutting up then, however, with the sun still in the heavens, and we 
settled to push straight on for Runnymead, three and a half miles 
further, a quiet wooded part of the river, and where there is good 
shelter.

We all wished, however, afterward that we had stopped at Penton Hook.  
Three or four miles up stream is a trifle, early in the morning, but it 
is a weary pull at the end of a long day.  You take no interest in the 
scenery during these last few miles.  You do not chat and laugh.  Every 
half-mile you cover seems like two.  You can hardly believe you are only 
where you are, and you are convinced that the map must be wrong; and, 
when you have trudged along for what seems to you at least ten miles, and 
still the lock is not in sight, you begin to seriously fear that somebody 
must have sneaked it, and run off with it.

I remember being terribly upset once up the river (in a figurative sense, 
I mean).  I was out with a young lady - cousin on my mother's side - and 
we were pulling down to Goring.  It was rather late, and we were anxious 
to get in - at least SHE was anxious to get in.  It was half-past six 
when we reached Benson's lock, and dusk was drawing on, and she began to 
get excited then.  She said she must be in to supper.  I said it was a 
thing I felt I wanted to be in at, too; and I drew out a map I had with 
me to see exactly how far it was.  I saw it was just a mile and a half to 
the next lock - Wallingford - and five on from there to Cleeve.

"Oh, it's all right!" I said.  "We'll be through the next lock before 
seven, and then there is only one more;" and I settled down and pulled 
steadily away.

We passed the bridge, and soon after that I asked if she saw the lock.  
She said no, she did not see any lock; and I said, "Oh!" and pulled on.  
Another five minutes went by, and then I asked her to look again.

"No," she said; "I can't see any signs of a lock."

"You - you are sure you know a lock, when you do see one?" I asked 
hesitatingly, not wishing to offend her.

The question did offend her, however, and she suggested that I had better 
look for myself; so I laid down the sculls, and took a view.  The river 
stretched out straight before us in the twilight for about a mile; not a 
ghost of a lock was to be seen.

"You don't think we have lost our way, do you?" asked my companion.

I did not see how that was possible; though, as I suggested, we might 
have somehow got into the weir stream, and be making for the falls.

This idea did not comfort her in the least, and she began to cry.  She 
said we should both be drowned, and that it was a judgment on her for 
coming out with me.

It seemed an excessive punishment, I thought; but my cousin thought not, 
and hoped it would all soon be over.

I tried to reassure her, and to make light of the whole affair.  I said 
that the fact evidently was that I was not rowing as fast as I fancied I 
was, but that we should soon reach the lock now; and I pulled on for 
another mile.

Then I began to get nervous myself.  I looked again at the map.  There 
was Wallingford lock, clearly marked, a mile and a half below Benson's.  
It was a good, reliable map; and, besides, I recollected the lock myself.  
I had been through it twice.  Where were we?  What had happened to us?  I 
began to think it must be all a dream, and that I was really asleep in 
bed, and should wake up in a minute, and be told it was past ten.

I asked my cousin if she thought it could be a dream, and she replied 
that she was just about to ask me the same question; and then we both 
wondered if we were both asleep, and if so, who was the real one that was 
dreaming, and who was the one that was only a dream; it got quite 
interesting.

I still went on pulling, however, and still no lock came in sight, and 
the river grew more and more gloomy and mysterious under the gathering 
shadows of night, and things seemed to be getting weird and uncanny.  I 
thought of hobgoblins and banshees, and will-o'-the-wisps, and those 
wicked girls who sit up all night on rocks, and lure people into whirl-
pools and things; and I wished I had been a better man, and knew more 
hymns; and in the middle of these reflections I heard the blessed strains 
of "He's got `em on," played, badly, on a concertina, and knew that we 
were saved.

I do not admire the tones of a concertina, as a rule; but, oh! how 
beautiful the music seemed to us both then - far, far more beautiful than 
the voice of Orpheus or the lute of Apollo, or anything of that sort 
could have sounded.  Heavenly melody, in our then state of mind, would 
only have still further harrowed us.  A soul-moving harmony, correctly 
performed, we should have taken as a spirit-warning, and have given up 
all hope.  But about the strains of "He's got `em on," jerked 
spasmodically, and with involuntary variations, out of a wheezy 
accordion, there was something singularly human and reassuring.

The sweet sounds drew nearer, and soon the boat from which they were 
worked lay alongside us.

It contained a party of provincial `Arrys and `Arriets, out for a 
moonlight sail.  (There was not any moon, but that was not their fault.)  
I never saw more attractive, lovable people in all my life.  I hailed 
them, and asked if they could tell me the way to Wallingford lock; and I 
explained that I had been looking for it for the last two hours.

"Wallingford lock!" they answered.  "Lor' love you, sir, that's been done 
away with for over a year.  There ain't no Wallingford lock now, sir.  
You're close to Cleeve now.  Blow me tight if `ere ain't a gentleman been 
looking for Wallingford lock, Bill!"

I had never thought of that.  I wanted to fall upon all their necks and 
bless them; but the stream was running too strong just there to allow of 
this, so I had to content myself with mere cold-sounding words of 
gratitude.

We thanked them over and over again, and we said it was a lovely night, 
and we wished them a pleasant trip, and, I think, I invited them all to 
come and spend a week with me, and my cousin said her mother would be so 
pleased to see them.  And we sang the soldiers' chorus out of FAUST, and 
got home in time for supper, after all.




CHAPTER X.


OUR FIRST NIGHT. - UNDER CANVAS. - AN APPEAL FOR HELP. - CONTRARINESS OF 
TEA-KETTLES, HOW TO OVERCOME. - SUPPER. - HOW TO FEEL VIRTUOUS. - WANTED! 
A COMFORTABLY-APPOINTED, WELL-DRAINED DESERT ISLAND, NEIGHBOURHOOD OF 
SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN PREFERRED. - FUNNY THING THAT HAPPENED TO GEORGE'S 
FATHER. - A RESTLESS NIGHT.

HARRIS and I began to think that Bell Weir lock must have been done away 
with after the same manner.  George had towed us up to Staines, and we 
had taken the boat from there, and it seemed that we were dragging fifty 
tons after us, and were walking forty miles.  It was half-past seven when 
we were through, and we all got in, and sculled up close to the left 
bank, looking out for a spot to haul up in.

We had originally intended to go on to Magna Charta Island, a sweetly 
pretty part of the river, where it winds through a soft, green valley, 
and to camp in one of the many picturesque inlets to be found round that 
tiny shore.  But, somehow, we did not feel that we yearned for the 
picturesque nearly so much now as we had earlier in the day.  A bit of 
water between a coal-barge and a gas-works would have quite satisfied us 
for that night.  We did not want scenery.  We wanted to have our supper 
and go to bed.  However, we did pull up to the point - "Picnic Point," it 
is called - and dropped into a very pleasant nook under a great elm-tree, 
to the spreading roots of which we fastened the boat.

Then we thought we were going to have supper (we had dispensed with tea, 
so as to save time), but George said no; that we had better get the 
canvas up first, before it got quite dark, and while we could see what we 
were doing.  Then, he said, all our work would be done, and we could sit 
down to eat with an easy mind.

That canvas wanted more putting up than I think any of us had bargained 
for.  It looked so simple in the abstract.  You took five iron arches, 
like gigantic croquet hoops, and fitted them up over the boat, and then 
stretched the canvas over them, and fastened it down: it would take quite 
ten minutes, we thought.

That was an under-estimate.

We took up the hoops, and began to drop them into the sockets placed for 
them.  You would not imagine this to be dangerous work; but, looking back 
now, the wonder to me is that any of us are alive to tell the tale.  They 
were not hoops, they were demons.  First they would not fit into their 
sockets at all, and we had to jump on them, and kick them, and hammer at 
them with the boat-hook; and, when they were in, it turned out that they 
were the wrong hoops for those particular sockets, and they had to come 
out again.

But they would not come out, until two of us had gone and struggled with 
them for five minutes, when they would jump up suddenly, and try and 
throw us into the water and drown us.  They had hinges in the middle, 
and, when we were not looking, they nipped us with these hinges in 
delicate parts of the body; and, while we were wrestling with one side of 
the hoop, and endeavouring to persuade it to do its duty, the other side 
would come behind us in a cowardly manner, and hit us over the head.

We got them fixed at last, and then all that was to be done was to 
arrange the covering over them.  George unrolled it, and fastened one end 
over the nose of the boat.  Harris stood in the middle to take it from 
George and roll it on to me, and I kept by the stern to receive it.  It 
was a long time coming down to me.  George did his part all right, but it 
was new work to Harris, and he bungled it.

How he managed it I do not know, he could not explain himself; but by 
some mysterious process or other he succeeded, after ten minutes of 
superhuman effort, in getting himself completely rolled up in it.  He was 
so firmly wrapped round and tucked in and folded over, that he could not 
get out.  He, of course, made frantic struggles for freedom - the 
birthright of every Englishman, - and, in doing so (I learned this 
afterwards), knocked over George; and then George, swearing at Harris, 
began to struggle too, and got himself entangled and rolled up.

I knew nothing about all this at the time.  I did not understand the 
business at all myself.  I had been told to stand where I was, and wait 
till the canvas came to me, and Montmorency and I stood there and waited, 
both as good as gold.  We could see the canvas being violently jerked and 
tossed about, pretty considerably; but we supposed this was part of the 
method, and did not interfere.

We also heard much smothered language coming from underneath it, and we 
guessed that they were finding the job rather troublesome, and concluded 
that we would wait until things had got a little simpler before we joined 
in.

We waited some time, but matters seemed to get only more and more 
involved, until, at last, George's head came wriggling out over the side 
of the boat, and spoke up.

It said:

"Give us a hand here, can't you, you cuckoo; standing there like a 
stuffed mummy, when you see we are both being suffocated, you dummy!"

I never could withstand an appeal for help, so I went and undid them; not 
before it was time, either, for Harris was nearly black in the face.

It took us half an hour's hard labour, after that, before it was properly 
up, and then we cleared the decks, and got out supper.  We put the kettle 
on to boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the stern and 
pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the other 
things out.

That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river.  If it sees 
that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing.  
You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have 
any tea at all.  You must not even look round at it.  Then you will soon 
hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea.

It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk very loudly 
to each other about how you don't need any tea, and are not going to have 
any.  You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear you, and then you 
shout out, "I don't want any tea; do you, George?" to which George shouts 
back, "Oh, no, I don't like tea; we'll have lemonade instead - tea's so 
indigestible."  Upon which the kettle boils over, and puts the stove out.

We adopted this harmless bit of trickery, and the result was that, by the 
time everything else was ready, the tea was waiting.  Then we lit the 
lantern, and squatted down to supper.

We wanted that supper.

For five-and-thirty minutes not a sound was heard throughout the length 
and breadth of that boat, save the clank of cutlery and crockery, and the 
steady grinding of four sets of molars.  At the end of five-and-thirty 
minutes, Harris said, "Ah!" and took his left leg out from under him and 
put his right one there instead.

Five minutes afterwards, George said, "Ah!" too, and threw his plate out 
on the bank; and, three minutes later than that, Montmorency gave the 
first sign of contentment he had exhibited since we had started, and 
rolled over on his side, and spread his legs out; and then I said, "Ah!" 
and bent my head back, and bumped it against one of the hoops, but I did 
not mind it.  I did not even swear.

How good one feels when one is full - how satisfied with ourselves and 
with the world!  People who have tried it, tell me that a clear 
conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does 
the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.  
One feels so forgiving and generous after a substantial and well-digested 
meal - so noble-minded, so kindly-hearted.

It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive 
organs.  We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so.  
It dictates to us our emotions, our passions.  After eggs and bacon, it 
says, "Work!"  After beefsteak and porter, it says, "Sleep!"  After a cup 
of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than 
three minutes), it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength.  
Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and 
into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-
like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes 
of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!"

After hot muffins, it says, "Be dull and soulless, like a beast of the 
field - a brainless animal, with listless eye, unlit by any ray of fancy, 
or of hope, or fear, or love, or life."  And after brandy, taken in 
sufficient quantity, it says, "Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, that 
your fellow-men may laugh - drivel in folly, and splutter in senseless 
sounds, and show what a helpless ninny is poor man whose wit and will are 
drowned, like kittens, side by side, in half an inch of alcohol."

We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach.  Reach not after 
morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, 
and diet it with care and judgment.  Then virtue and contentment will 
come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and 
you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father - a 
noble, pious man.

Before our supper, Harris and George and I were quarrelsome and snappy 
and ill-tempered; after our supper, we sat and beamed on one another, and 
we beamed upon the dog, too.  We loved each other, we loved everybody.  
Harris, in moving about, trod on George's corn.  Had this happened before 
supper, George would have expressed wishes and desires concerning 
Harris's fate in this world and the next that would have made a 
thoughtful man shudder.

As it was, he said: "Steady, old man; `ware wheat."

And Harris, instead of merely observing, in his most unpleasant tones, 
that a fellow could hardly help treading on some bit of George's foot, if 
he had to move about at all within ten yards of where George was sitting, 
suggesting that George never ought to come into an ordinary sized boat 
with feet that length, and advising him to hang them over the side, as he 
would have done before supper, now said: "Oh, I'm so sorry, old chap; I 
hope I haven't hurt you."

And George said: "Not at all;" that it was his fault; and Harris said no, 
it was his.

It was quite pretty to hear them.

We lit our pipes, and sat, looking out on the quiet night, and talked.

George said why could not we be always like this - away from the world, 
with its sin and temptation, leading sober, peaceful lives, and doing 
good.  I said it was the sort of thing I had often longed for myself; and 
we discussed the possibility of our going away, we four, to some handy, 
well-fitted desert island, and living there in the woods.

Harris said that the danger about desert islands, as far as he had heard, 
was that they were so damp: but George said no, not if properly drained.

And then we got on to drains, and that put George in mind of a very funny 
thing that happened to his father once.  He said his father was 
travelling with another fellow through Wales, and, one night, they 
stopped at a little inn, where there were some other fellows, and they 
joined the other fellows, and spent the evening with them.

They had a very jolly evening, and sat up late, and, by the time they 
came to go to bed, they (this was when George's father was a very young 
man) were slightly jolly, too.  They (George's father and George's 
father's friend) were to sleep in the same room, but in different beds.  
They took the candle, and went up.  The candle lurched up against the 
wall when they got into the room, and went out, and they had to undress 
and grope into bed in the dark.  This they did; but, instead of getting 
into separate beds, as they thought they were doing, they both climbed 
into the same one without knowing it - one getting in with his head at 
the top, and the other crawling in from the opposite side of the compass, 
and lying with his feet on the pillow.

There was silence for a moment, and then George's father said:

"Joe!"

"What's the matter, Tom?" replied Joe's voice from the other end of the 
bed.

"Why, there's a man in my bed," said George's father; "here's his feet on 
my pillow."

"Well, it's an extraordinary thing, Tom," answered the other; "but I'm 
blest if there isn't a man in my bed, too!"

"What are you going to do?" asked George's father.

"Well, I'm going to chuck him out," replied Joe.

"So am I," said George's father, valiantly.

There was a brief struggle, followed by two heavy bumps on the floor, and 
then a rather doleful voice said:

"I say, Tom!"

"Yes!"

"How have you got on?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, my man's chucked me out."

"So's mine!  I say, I don't think much of this inn, do you?"

"What was the name of that inn?" said Harris.

"The Pig and Whistle," said George.  "Why?"

"Ah, no, then it isn't the same," replied Harris.

"What do you mean?" queried George.

"Why it's so curious," murmured Harris, "but precisely that very same 
thing happened to MY father once at a country inn.  I've often heard him 
tell the tale.  I thought it might have been the same inn."

We turned in at ten that night, and I thought I should sleep well, being 
tired; but I didn't.  As a rule, I undress and put my head on the pillow, 
and then somebody bangs at the door, and says it is half-past eight: but, 
to-night, everything seemed against me; the novelty of it all, the 
hardness of the boat, the cramped position (I was lying with my feet 
under one seat, and my head on another), the sound of the lapping water 
round the boat, and the wind among the branches, kept me restless and 
disturbed.

I did get to sleep for a few hours, and then some part of the boat which 
seemed to have grown up in the night - for it certainly was not there 
when we started, and it had disappeared by the morning - kept digging 
into my spine.  I slept through it for a while, dreaming that I had 
swallowed a sovereign, and that they were cutting a hole in my back with 
a gimlet, so as to try and get it out.  I thought it very unkind of them, 
and I told them I would owe them the money, and they should have it at 
the end of the month.  But they would not hear of that, and said it would 
be much better if they had it then, because otherwise the interest would 
accumulate so.  I got quite cross with them after a bit, and told them 
what I thought of them, and then they gave the gimlet such an 
excruciating wrench that I woke up.

The boat seemed stuffy, and my head ached; so I thought I would step out 
into the cool night-air.  I slipped on what clothes I could find about - 
some of my own, and some of George's and Harris's - and crept under the 
canvas on to the bank.

It was a glorious night.  The moon had sunk, and left the quiet earth 
alone with the stars.  It seemed as if, in the silence and the hush, 
while we her children slept, they were talking with her, their sister - 
conversing of mighty mysteries in voices too vast and deep for childish 
human ears to catch the sound.

They awe us, these strange stars, so cold, so clear.  We are as children 
whose small feet have strayed into some dim-lit temple of the god they 
have been taught to worship but know not; and, standing where the echoing 
dome spans the long vista of the shadowy light, glance up, half hoping, 
half afraid to see some awful vision hovering there.

And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the night.  In its 
great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed.  The day has been 
so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of 
bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us.  Then 
Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our 
fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and 
smiles; and, though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and 
lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.

Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very 
silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan.  Night's 
heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our 
hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away 
beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a 
mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great 
Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that 
Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.

Only those who have worn the crown of suffering can look upon that 
wondrous light; and they, when they return, may not speak of it, or tell 
the mystery they know.

Once upon a time, through a strange country, there rode some goodly 
knights, and their path lay by a deep wood, where tangled briars grew 
very thick and strong, and tore the flesh of them that lost their way 
therein.  And the leaves of the trees that grew in the wood were very 
dark and thick, so that no ray of light came through the branches to 
lighten the gloom and sadness.

And, as they passed by that dark wood, one knight of those that rode, 
missing his comrades, wandered far away, and returned to them no more; 
and they, sorely grieving, rode on without him, mourning him as one dead.

Now, when they reached the fair castle towards which they had been 
journeying, they stayed there many days, and made merry; and one night, 
as they sat in cheerful ease around the logs that burned in the great 
hall, and drank a loving measure, there came the comrade they had lost, 
and greeted them.  His clothes were ragged, like a beggar's, and many sad 
wounds were on his sweet flesh, but upon his face there shone a great 
radiance of deep joy.

And they questioned him, asking him what had befallen him: and he told 
them how in the dark wood he had lost his way, and had wandered many days 
and nights, till, torn and bleeding, he had lain him down to die.

Then, when he was nigh unto death, lo! through the savage gloom there 
came to him a stately maiden, and took him by the hand and led him on 
through devious paths, unknown to any man, until upon the darkness of the 
wood there dawned a light such as the light of day was unto but as a 
little lamp unto the sun; and, in that wondrous light, our way-worn 
knight saw as in a dream a vision, and so glorious, so fair the vision 
seemed, that of his bleeding wounds he thought no more, but stood as one 
entranced, whose joy is deep as is the sea, whereof no man can tell the 
depth.

And the vision faded, and the knight, kneeling upon the ground, thanked 
the good saint who into that sad wood had strayed his steps, so he had 
seen the vision that lay there hid.

And the name of the dark forest was Sorrow; but of the vision that the 
good knight saw therein we may not speak nor tell.




CHAPTER XI.


HOW GEORGE, ONCE UPON A TIME, GOT UP EARLY IN THE MORNING. - GEORGE, 
HARRIS, AND MONTMORENCY DO NOT LIKE THE LOOK OF THE COLD WATER. - HEROISM 
AND DETERMINATION ON THE PART OF J. - GEORGE AND HIS SHIRT: STORY WITH A 
MORAL. - HARRIS AS COOK. - HISTORICAL RETROSPECT, SPECIALLY INSERTED FOR 
THE USE OF SCHOOLS.

I WOKE at six the next morning; and found George awake too.  We both 
turned round, and tried to go to sleep again, but we could not.  Had 
there been any particular reason why we should not have gone to sleep 
again, but have got up and dressed then and there, we should have dropped 
off while we were looking at our watches, and have slept till ten.  As 
there was no earthly necessity for our getting up under another two hours 
at the very least, and our getting up at that time was an utter 
absurdity, it was only in keeping with the natural cussedness of things 
in general that we should both feel that lying down for five minutes more 
would be death to us.

George said that the same kind of thing, only worse, had happened to him 
some eighteen months ago, when he was lodging by himself in the house of 
a certain Mrs. Gippings.  He said his watch went wrong one evening, and 
stopped at a quarter-past eight.  He did not know this at the time 
because, for some reason or other, he forgot to wind it up when he went 
to bed (an unusual occurrence with him), and hung it up over his pillow 
without ever looking at the thing.

It was in the winter when this happened, very near the shortest day, and 
a week of fog into the bargain, so the fact that it was still very dark 
when George woke in the morning was no guide to him as to the time.  He 
reached up, and hauled down his watch.  It was a quarter-past eight.

"Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" exclaimed George; "and here 
have I got to be in the City by nine.  Why didn't somebody call me?  Oh, 
this is a shame!"  And he flung the watch down, and sprang out of bed, 
and had a cold bath, and washed himself, and dressed himself, and shaved 
himself in cold water because there was not time to wait for the hot, and 
then rushed and had another look at the watch.

Whether the shaking it had received in being thrown down on the bed had 
started it, or how it was, George could not say, but certain it was that 
from a quarter-past eight it had begun to go, and now pointed to twenty 
minutes to nine.

George snatched it up, and rushed downstairs.  In the sitting-room, all 
was dark and silent: there was no fire, no breakfast.  George said it was 
a wicked shame of Mrs. G., and he made up his mind to tell her what he 
thought of her when he came home in the evening.  Then he dashed on his 
great-coat and hat, and, seizing his umbrella, made for the front door.  
The door was not even unbolted.  George anathematized Mrs. G. for a lazy 
old woman, and thought it was very strange that people could not get up 
at a decent, respectable time, unlocked and unbolted the door, and ran 
out.

He ran hard for a quarter of a mile, and at the end of that distance it 
began to be borne in upon him as a strange and curious thing that there 
were so few people about, and that there were no shops open.  It was 
certainly a very dark and foggy morning, but still it seemed an unusual 
course to stop all business on that account.  HE had to go to business: 
why should other people stop in bed merely because it was dark and foggy!

At length he reached Holborn.  Not a shutter was down! not a bus was 
about!  There were three men in sight, one of whom was a policeman; a 
market-cart full of cabbages, and a dilapidated looking cab.  George 
pulled out his watch and looked at it: it was five minutes to nine!  He 
stood still and counted his pulse.  He stooped down and felt his legs.  
Then, with his watch still in his hand, he went up to the policeman, and 
asked him if he knew what the time was.

"What's the time?" said the man, eyeing George up and down with evident 
suspicion; "why, if you listen you will hear it strike."

George listened, and a neighbouring clock immediately obliged.

"But it's only gone three!" said George in an injured tone, when it had 
finished.

"Well, and how many did you want it to go?" replied the constable.

"Why, nine," said George, showing his watch.

"Do you know where you live?" said the guardian of public order, 
severely.

George thought, and gave the address.

"Oh! that's where it is, is it?" replied the man; "well, you take my 
advice and go there quietly, and take that watch of yours with you; and 
don't let's have any more of it."

And George went home again, musing as he walked along, and let himself 
in.

At first, when he got in, he determined to undress and go to bed again; 
but when he thought of the redressing and re-washing, and the having of 
another bath, he determined he would not, but would sit up and go to 
sleep in the easy-chair.

But he could not get to sleep: he never felt more wakeful in his life; so 
he lit the lamp and got out the chess-board, and played himself a game of 
chess.  But even that did not enliven him: it seemed slow somehow; so he 
gave chess up and tried to read.  He did not seem able to take any sort 
of interest in reading either, so he put on his coat again and went out 
for a walk.

It was horribly lonesome and dismal, and all the policemen he met 
regarded him with undisguised suspicion, and turned their lanterns on him 
and followed him about, and this had such an effect upon him at last that 
he began to feel as if he really had done something, and he got to 
slinking down the by-streets and hiding in dark doorways when he heard 
the regulation flip-flop approaching.

Of course, this conduct made the force only more distrustful of him than 
ever, and they would come and rout him out and ask him what he was doing 
there; and when he answered, "Nothing," he had merely come out for a 
stroll (it was then four o'clock in the morning), they looked as though 
they did not believe him, and two plain-clothes constables came home with 
him to see if he really did live where he had said he did.  They saw him 
go in with his key, and then they took up a position opposite and watched 
the house.

He thought he would light the fire when he got inside, and make himself 
some breakfast, just to pass away the time; but he did not seem able to 
handle anything from a scuttleful of coals to a teaspoon without dropping 
it or falling over it, and making such a noise that he was in mortal fear 
that it would wake Mrs. G. up, and that she would think it was burglars 
and open the window and call "Police!" and then these two detectives 
would rush in and handcuff him, and march him off to the police-court.

He was in a morbidly nervous state by this time, and he pictured the 
trial, and his trying to explain the circumstances to the jury, and 
nobody believing him, and his being sentenced to twenty years' penal 
servitude, and his mother dying of a broken heart.  So he gave up trying 
to get breakfast, and wrapped himself up in his overcoat and sat in the 
easy-chair till Mrs. G came down at half-past seven.

He said he had never got up too early since that morning: it had been 
such a warning to him.

We had been sitting huddled up in our rugs while George had been telling 
me this true story, and on his finishing it I set to work to wake up 
Harris with a scull.  The third prod did it: and he turned over on the 
other side, and said he would be down in a minute, and that he would have 
his lace-up boots.  We soon let him know where he was, however, by the 
aid of the hitcher, and he sat up suddenly, sending Montmorency, who had 
been sleeping the sleep of the just right on the middle of his chest, 
sprawling across the boat.

Then we pulled up the canvas, and all four of us poked our heads out over 
the off-side, and looked down at the water and shivered.  The idea, 
overnight, had been that we should get up early in the morning, fling off 
our rugs and shawls, and, throwing back the canvas, spring into the river 
with a joyous shout, and revel in a long delicious swim.  Somehow, now 
the morning had come, the notion seemed less tempting.  The water looked 
damp and chilly: the wind felt cold.

"Well, who's going to be first in?" said Harris at last.

There was no rush for precedence.  George settled the matter so far as he 
was concerned by retiring into the boat and pulling on his socks.  
Montmorency gave vent to an involuntary howl, as if merely thinking of 
the thing had given him the horrors; and Harris said it would be so 
difficult to get into the boat again, and went back and sorted out his 
trousers.

I did not altogether like to give in, though I did not relish the plunge.  
There might be snags about, or weeds, I thought.  I meant to compromise 
matters by going down to the edge and just throwing the water over 
myself; so I took a towel and crept out on the bank and wormed my way 
along on to the branch of a tree that dipped down into the water.

It was bitterly cold.  The wind cut like a knife.  I thought I would not 
throw the water over myself after all.  I would go back into the boat and 
dress; and I turned to do so; and, as I turned, the silly branch gave 
way, and I and the towel went in together with a tremendous splash, and I 
was out mid-stream with a gallon of Thames water inside me before I knew 
what had happened.

"By Jove! old J.'s gone in," I heard Harris say, as I came blowing to the 
surface.  "I didn't think he'd have the pluck to do it.  Did you?"

"Is it all right?" sung out George.

"Lovely," I spluttered back.  "You are duffers not to come in.  I 
wouldn't have missed this for worlds.  Why won't you try it?  It only 
wants a little determination."

But I could not persuade them.

Rather an amusing thing happened while dressing that morning.  I was very 
cold when I got back into the boat, and, in my hurry to get my shirt on, 
I accidentally jerked it into the water.  It made me awfully wild, 
especially as George burst out laughing.  I could not see anything to 
laugh at, and I told George so, and he only laughed the more.  I never 
saw a man laugh so much.  I quite lost my temper with him at last, and I 
pointed out to him what a drivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was; 
but he only roared the louder.  And then, just as I was landing the 
shirt, I noticed that it was not my shirt at all, but George's, which I 
had mistaken for mine; whereupon the humour of the thing struck me for 
the first time, and I began to laugh.  And the more I looked from 
George's wet shirt to George, roaring with laughter, the more I was 
amused, and I laughed so much that I had to let the shirt fall back into 
the water again.

"Ar'n't you - you - going to get it out?" said George, between his 
shrieks.

I could not answer him at all for a while, I was laughing so, but, at 
last, between my peals I managed to jerk out:

"It isn't my shirt - it's YOURS!"

I never saw a man's face change from lively to severe so suddenly in all 
my life before.

"What!" he yelled, springing up.  "You silly cuckoo!  Why can't you be 
more careful what you're doing?  Why the deuce don't you go and dress on 
the bank?  You're not fit to be in a boat, you're not.  Gimme the 
hitcher."

I tried to make him see the fun of the thing, but he could not.  George 
is very dense at seeing a joke sometimes.

Harris proposed that we should have scrambled eggs for breakfast.  He 
said he would cook them.  It seemed, from his account, that he was very 
good at doing scrambled eggs.  He often did them at picnics and when out 
on yachts.  He was quite famous for them.  People who had once tasted his 
scrambled eggs, so we gathered from his conversation, never cared for any 
other food afterwards, but pined away and died when they could not get 
them.

It made our mouths water to hear him talk about the things, and we handed 
him out the stove and the frying-pan and all the eggs that had not 
smashed and gone over everything in the hamper, and begged him to begin.

He had some trouble in breaking the eggs - or rather not so much trouble 
in breaking them exactly as in getting them into the frying-pan when 
broken, and keeping them off his trousers, and preventing them from 
running up his sleeve; but he fixed some half-a-dozen into the pan at 
last, and then squatted down by the side of the stove and chivied them 
about with a fork.

It seemed harassing work, so far as George and I could judge.  Whenever 
he went near the pan he burned himself, and then he would drop everything 
and dance round the stove, flicking his fingers about and cursing the 
things.  Indeed, every time George and I looked round at him he was sure 
to be performing this feat.  We thought at first that it was a necessary 
part of the culinary arrangements.

We did not know what scrambled eggs were, and we fancied that it must be 
some Red Indian or Sandwich Islands sort of dish that required dances and 
incantations for its proper cooking.  Montmorency went and put his nose 
over it once, and the fat spluttered up and scalded him, and then he 
began dancing and cursing.  Altogether it was one of the most interesting 
and exciting operations I have ever witnessed.  George and I were both 
quite sorry when it was over.

The result was not altogether the success that Harris had anticipated.  
There seemed so little to show for the business.  Six eggs had gone into 
the frying-pan, and all that came out was a teaspoonful of burnt and 
unappetizing looking mess.

Harris said it was the fault of the frying-pan, and thought it would have 
gone better if we had had a fish-kettle and a gas-stove; and we decided 
not to attempt the dish again until we had those aids to housekeeping by 
us.

The sun had got more powerful by the time we had finished breakfast, and 
the wind had dropped, and it was as lovely a morning as one could desire.  
Little was in sight to remind us of the nineteenth century; and, as we 
looked out upon the river in the morning sunlight, we could almost fancy 
that the centuries between us and that ever-to-be-famous June morning of 
1215 had been drawn aside, and that we, English yeomen's sons in homespun 
cloth, with dirk at belt, were waiting there to witness the writing of 
that stupendous page of history, the meaning whereof was to be translated 
to the common people some four hundred and odd years later by one Oliver 
Cromwell, who had deeply studied it.

It is a fine summer morning - sunny, soft, and still.  But through the 
air there runs a thrill of coming stir.  King John has slept at Duncroft 
Hall, and all the day before the little town of Staines has echoed to the 
clang of armed men, and the clatter of great horses over its rough 
stones, and the shouts of captains, and the grim oaths and surly jests of 
bearded bowmen, billmen, pikemen, and strange-speaking foreign spearmen.

Gay-cloaked companies of knights and squires have ridden in, all travel-
stained and dusty.  And all the evening long the timid townsmen's doors 
have had to be quick opened to let in rough groups of soldiers, for whom 
there must be found both board and lodging, and the best of both, or woe 
betide the house and all within; for the sword is judge and jury, 
plaintiff and executioner, in these tempestuous times, and pays for what 
it takes by sparing those from whom it takes it, if it pleases it to do 
so.

Round the camp-fire in the market-place gather still more of the Barons' 
troops, and eat and drink deep, and bellow forth roystering drinking 
songs, and gamble and quarrel as the evening grows and deepens into 
night.  The firelight sheds quaint shadows on their piled-up arms and on 
their uncouth forms.  The children of the town steal round to watch them, 
wondering; and brawny country wenches, laughing, draw near to bandy ale-
house jest and jibe with the swaggering troopers, so unlike the village 
swains, who, now despised, stand apart behind, with vacant grins upon 
their broad, peering faces.  And out from the fields around, glitter the 
faint lights of more distant camps, as here some great lord's followers 
lie mustered, and there false John's French mercenaries hover like 
crouching wolves without the town.

And so, with sentinel in each dark street, and twinkling watch-fires on 
each height around, the night has worn away, and over this fair valley of 
old Thame has broken the morning of the great day that is to close so big 
with the fate of ages yet unborn.

Ever since grey dawn, in the lower of the two islands, just above where 
we are standing, there has been great clamour, and the sound of many 
workmen.  The great pavilion brought there yester eve is being raised, 
and carpenters are busy nailing tiers of seats, while `prentices from 
London town are there with many-coloured stuffs and silks and cloth of 
gold and silver.

And now, lo! down upon the road that winds along the river's bank from 
Staines there come towards us, laughing and talking together in deep 
guttural bass, a half-a-score of stalwart halbert-men - Barons' men, 
these - and halt at a hundred yards or so above us, on the other bank, 
and lean upon their arms, and wait.

And so, from hour to hour, march up along the road ever fresh groups and 
bands of armed men, their casques and breastplates flashing back the long 
low lines of morning sunlight, until, as far as eye can reach, the way 
seems thick with glittering steel and prancing steeds.  And shouting 
horsemen are galloping from group to group, and little banners are 
fluttering lazily in the warm breeze, and every now and then there is a 
deeper stir as the ranks make way on either side, and some great Baron on 
his war-horse, with his guard of squires around him, passes along to take 
his station at the head of his serfs and vassals.

And up the slope of Cooper's Hill, just opposite, are gathered the 
wondering rustics and curious townsfolk, who have run from Staines, and 
none are quite sure what the bustle is about, but each one has a 
different version of the great event that they have come to see; and some 
say that much good to all the people will come from this day's work; but 
the old men shake their heads, for they have heard such tales before.

And all the river down to Staines is dotted with small craft and boats 
and tiny coracles - which last are growing out of favour now, and are 
used only by the poorer folk.  Over the rapids, where in after years trim 
Bell Weir lock will stand, they have been forced or dragged by their 
sturdy rowers, and now are crowding up as near as they dare come to the 
great covered barges, which lie in readiness to bear King John to where 
the fateful Charter waits his signing.

It is noon, and we and all the people have been waiting patient for many 
an hour, and the rumour has run round that slippery John has again 
escaped from the Barons' grasp, and has stolen away from Duncroft Hall 
with his mercenaries at his heels, and will soon be doing other work than 
signing charters for his people's liberty.

Not so!  This time the grip upon him has been one of iron, and he has 
slid and wriggled in vain.  Far down the road a little cloud of dust has 
risen, and draws nearer and grows larger, and the pattering of many hoofs 
grows louder, and in and out between the scattered groups of drawn-up 
men, there pushes on its way a brilliant cavalcade of gay-dressed lords 
and knights.  And front and rear, and either flank, there ride the yeomen 
of the Barons, and in the midst King John.

He rides to where the barges lie in readiness, and the great Barons step 
forth from their ranks to meet him.  He greets them with a smile and 
laugh, and pleasant honeyed words, as though it were some feast in his 
honour to which he had been invited.  But as he rises to dismount, he 
casts one hurried glance from his own French mercenaries drawn up in the 
rear to the grim ranks of the Barons' men that hem him in.

Is it too late?  One fierce blow at the unsuspecting horseman at his 
side, one cry to his French troops, one desperate charge upon the unready 
lines before him, and these rebellious Barons might rue the day they 
dared to thwart his plans!  A bolder hand might have turned the game even 
at that point.  Had it been a Richard there! the cup of liberty might 
have been dashed from England's lips, and the taste of freedom held back 
for a hundred years.

But the heart of King John sinks before the stern faces of the English 
fighting men, and the arm of King John drops back on to his rein, and he 
dismounts and takes his seat in the foremost barge.  And the Barons 
follow in, with each mailed hand upon the sword-hilt, and the word is 
given to let go.

Slowly the heavy, bright-decked barges leave the shore of Runningmede.  
Slowly against the swift current they work their ponderous way, till, 
with a low grumble, they grate against the bank of the little island that 
from this day will bear the name of Magna Charta Island.  And King John 
has stepped upon the shore, and we wait in breathless silence till a 
great shout cleaves the air, and the great cornerstone in England's 
temple of liberty has, now we know, been firmly laid.




CHAPTER XII.


HENRY VIII. AND ANNE BOLEYN. - DISADVANTAGES OF LIVING IN SAME HOUSE WITH 
PAIR OF LOVERS. - A TRYING TIME FOR THE ENGLISH NATION. - A NIGHT SEARCH 
FOR THE PICTURESQUE. - HOMELESS AND HOUSELESS. - HARRIS PREPARES TO DIE. 
- AN ANGEL COMES ALONG. - EFFECT OF SUDDEN JOY ON HARRIS. - A LITTLE 
SUPPER. - LUNCH. - HIGH PRICE FOR MUSTARD. - A FEARFUL BATTLE. - 
MAIDENHEAD. - SAILING. - THREE FISHERS. - WE ARE CURSED.

I WAS sitting on the bank, conjuring up this scene to myself, when George 
remarked that when I was quite rested, perhaps I would not mind helping 
to wash up; and, thus recalled from the days of the glorious past to the 
prosaic present, with all its misery and sin, I slid down into the boat 
and cleaned out the frying-pan with a stick of wood and a tuft of grass, 
polishing it up finally with George's wet shirt.

We went over to Magna Charta Island, and had a look at the stone which 
stands in the cottage there and on which the great Charter is said to 
have been signed; though, as to whether it really was signed there, or, 
as some say, on the other bank at "Runningmede," I decline to commit 
myself.  As far as my own personal opinion goes, however, I am inclined 
to give weight to the popular island theory.  Certainly, had I been one 
of the Barons, at the time, I should have strongly urged upon my comrades 
the advisability of our getting such a slippery customer as King John on 
to the island, where there was less chance of surprises and tricks.

There are the ruins of an old priory in the grounds of Ankerwyke House, 
which is close to Picnic Point, and it was round about the grounds of 
this old priory that Henry VIII. is said to have waited for and met Anne 
Boleyn.  He also used to meet her at Hever Castle in Kent, and also 
somewhere near St. Albans.  It must have been difficult for the people of 
England in those days to have found a spot where these thoughtless young 
folk were NOT spooning.

Have you ever been in a house where there are a couple courting?  It is 
most trying.  You think you will go and sit in the drawing-room, and you 
march off there.  As you open the door, you hear a noise as if somebody 
had suddenly recollected something, and, when you get in, Emily is over 
by the window, full of interest in the opposite side of the road, and 
your friend, John Edward, is at the other end of the room with his whole 
soul held in thrall by photographs of other people's relatives.

"Oh!" you say, pausing at the door, "I didn't know anybody was here."

"Oh! didn't you?" says Emily, coldly, in a tone which implies that she 
does not believe you.

You hang about for a bit, then you say:

"It's very dark.  Why don't you light the gas?"

John Edward says, "Oh!" he hadn't noticed it; and Emily says that papa 
does not like the gas lit in the afternoon.

You tell them one or two items of news, and give them your views and 
opinions on the Irish question; but this does not appear to interest 
them.  All they remark on any subject is, "Oh!"  "Is it?"  "Did he?"  
"Yes," and "You don't say so!"  And, after ten minutes of such style of 
conversation, you edge up to the door, and slip out, and are surprised to 
find that the door immediately closes behind you, and shuts itself, 
without your having touched it.

Half an hour later, you think you will try a pipe in the conservatory.  
The only chair in the place is occupied by Emily; and John Edward, if the 
language of clothes can be relied upon, has evidently been sitting on the 
floor.  They do not speak, but they give you a look that says all that 
can be said in a civilised community; and you back out promptly and shut 
the door behind you.

You are afraid to poke your nose into any room in the house now; so, 
after walking up and down the stairs for a while, you go and sit in your 
own bedroom.  This becomes uninteresting, however, after a time, and so 
you put on your hat and stroll out into the garden.  You walk down the 
path, and as you pass the summer-house you glance in, and there are those 
two young idiots, huddled up into one corner of it; and they see you, and 
are evidently under the idea that, for some wicked purpose of your own, 
you are following them about.

"Why don't they have a special room for this sort of thing, and make 
people keep to it?" you mutter; and you rush back to the hall and get 
your umbrella and go out.

It must have been much like this when that foolish boy Henry VIII. was 
courting his little Anne.  People in Buckinghamshire would have come upon 
them unexpectedly when they were mooning round Windsor and Wraysbury, and 
have exclaimed, "Oh! you here!" and Henry would have blushed and said, 
"Yes; he'd just come over to see a man;" and Anne would have said, "Oh, 
I'm so glad to see you!  Isn't it funny?  I've just met Mr. Henry VIII. 
in the lane, and he's going the same way I am."

Then those people would have gone away and said to themselves: "Oh! we'd 
better get out of here while this billing and cooing is on.  We'll go 
down to Kent."

And they would go to Kent, and the first thing they would see in Kent, 
when they got there, would be Henry and Anne fooling round Hever Castle.

"Oh, drat this!" they would have said.  "Here, let's go away.  I can't 
stand any more of it.  Let's go to St. Albans - nice quiet place, St. 
Albans."

And when they reached St. Albans, there would be that wretched couple, 
kissing under the Abbey walls.  Then these folks would go and be pirates 
until the marriage was over.

From Picnic Point to Old Windsor Lock is a delightful bit of the river.  
A shady road, dotted here and there with dainty little cottages, runs by 
the bank up to the "Bells of Ouseley," a picturesque inn, as most up-
river inns are, and a place where a very good glass of ale may be drunk - 
so Harris says; and on a matter of this kind you can take Harris's word.  
Old Windsor is a famous spot in its way.  Edward the Confessor had a 
palace here, and here the great Earl Godwin was proved guilty by the 
justice of that age of having encompassed the death of the King's 
brother.  Earl Godwin broke a piece of bread and held it in his hand.

"If I am guilty," said the Earl, "may this bread choke me when I eat it!"

Then he put the bread into his mouth and swallowed it, and it choked him, 
and he died.

After you pass Old Windsor, the river is somewhat uninteresting, and does 
not become itself again until you are nearing Boveney.  George and I 
towed up past the Home Park, which stretches along the right bank from 
Albert to Victoria Bridge; and as we were passing Datchet, George asked 
me if I remembered our first trip up the river, and when we landed at 
Datchet at ten o'clock at night, and wanted to go to bed.

I answered that I did remember it.  It will be some time before I forget 
it.

It was the Saturday before the August Bank Holiday.  We were tired and 
hungry, we same three, and when we got to Datchet we took out the hamper, 
the two bags, and the rugs and coats, and such like things, and started 
off to look for diggings.  We passed a very pretty little hotel, with 
clematis and creeper over the porch; but there was no honeysuckle about 
it, and, for some reason or other, I had got my mind fixed on 
honeysuckle, and I said:

"Oh, don't let's go in there!  Let's go on a bit further, and see if 
there isn't one with honeysuckle over it."

So we went on till we came to another hotel.  That was a very nice hotel, 
too, and it had honey-suckle on it, round at the side; but Harris did not 
like the look of a man who was leaning against the front door.  He said 
he didn't look a nice man at all, and he wore ugly boots: so we went on 
further.  We went a goodish way without coming across any more hotels, 
and then we met a man, and asked him to direct us to a few.

He said:

"Why, you are coming away from them.  You must turn right round and go 
back, and then you will come to the Stag."

We said:

"Oh, we had been there, and didn't like it - no honeysuckle over it."

"Well, then," he said, "there's the Manor House, just opposite.  Have you 
tried that?"

Harris replied that we did not want to go there - didn't like the looks 
of a man who was stopping there - Harris did not like the colour of his 
hair, didn't like his boots, either.

"Well, I don't know what you'll do, I'm sure," said our informant; 
"because they are the only two inns in the place."

"No other inns!" exclaimed Harris.

"None," replied the man.

"What on earth are we to do?" cried Harris.

Then George spoke up.  He said Harris and I could get an hotel built for 
us, if we liked, and have some people made to put in.  For his part, he 
was going back to the Stag.

The greatest minds never realise their ideals in any matter; and Harris 
and I sighed over the hollowness of all earthly desires, and followed 
George.

We took our traps into the Stag, and laid them down in the hall.

The landlord came up and said:

"Good evening, gentlemen."

"Oh, good evening," said George; "we want three beds, please."

"Very sorry, sir," said the landlord; "but I'm afraid we can't manage 
it."

"Oh, well, never mind," said George, "two will do.  Two of us can sleep 
in one bed, can't we?" he continued, turning to Harris and me.

Harris said, "Oh, yes;" he thought George and I could sleep in one bed 
very easily.

"Very sorry, sir," again repeated the landlord: "but we really haven't 
got a bed vacant in the whole house.  In fact, we are putting two, and 
even three gentlemen in one bed, as it is."

This staggered us for a bit.

But Harris, who is an old traveller, rose to the occasion, and, laughing 
cheerily, said:

"Oh, well, we can't help it.  We must rough it.  You must give us a 
shake-down in the billiard-room."

"Very sorry, sir.  Three gentlemen sleeping on the billiard-table 
already, and two in the coffee-room.  Can't possibly take you in to-
night."

We picked up our things, and went over to the Manor House.  It was a 
pretty little place.  I said I thought I should like it better than the 
other house; and Harris said, "Oh, yes," it would be all right, and we 
needn't look at the man with the red hair; besides, the poor fellow 
couldn't help having red hair.

Harris spoke quite kindly and sensibly about it.

The people at the Manor House did not wait to hear us talk.  The landlady 
met us on the doorstep with the greeting that we were the fourteenth 
party she had turned away within the last hour and a half.  As for our 
meek suggestions of stables, billiard-room, or coal-cellars, she laughed 
them all to scorn: all these nooks had been snatched up long ago.

Did she know of any place in the whole village where we could get shelter 
for the night?

"Well, if we didn't mind roughing it - she did not recommend it, mind - 
but there was a little beershop half a mile down the Eton road - "

We waited to hear no more; we caught up the hamper and the bags, and the 
coats and rugs, and parcels, and ran.  The distance seemed more like a 
mile than half a mile, but we reached the place at last, and rushed, 
panting, into the bar.

The people at the beershop were rude.  They merely laughed at us.  There 
were only three beds in the whole house, and they had seven single 
gentlemen and two married couples sleeping there already.  A kind-hearted 
bargeman, however, who happened to be in the tap-room, thought we might 
try the grocer's, next door to the Stag, and we went back.

The grocer's was full.  An old woman we met in the shop then kindly took 
us along with her for a quarter of a mile, to a lady friend of hers, who 
occasionally let rooms to gentlemen.

This old woman walked very slowly, and we were twenty minutes getting to 
her lady friend's.  She enlivened the journey by describing to us, as we 
trailed along, the various pains she had in her back.

Her lady friend's rooms were let.  From there we were recommended to No. 
27.  No. 27 was full, and sent us to No. 32, and 32 was full.

Then we went back into the high road, and Harris sat down on the hamper 
and said he would go no further.  He said it seemed a quiet spot, and he 
would like to die there.  He requested George and me to kiss his mother 
for him, and to tell all his relations that he forgave them and died 
happy.

At that moment an angel came by in the disguise of a small boy (and I 
cannot think of any more effective disguise an angel could have assumed), 
with a can of beer in one hand, and in the other something at the end of 
a string, which he let down on to every flat stone he came across, and 
then pulled up again, this producing a peculiarly unattractive sound, 
suggestive of suffering.

We asked this heavenly messenger (as we discovered him afterwards to be) 
if he knew of any lonely house, whose occupants were few and feeble (old 
ladies or paralysed gentlemen preferred), who could be easily frightened 
into giving up their beds for the night to three desperate men; or, if 
not this, could he recommend us to an empty pigstye, or a disused 
limekiln, or anything of that sort.  He did not know of any such place - 
at least, not one handy; but he said that, if we liked to come with him, 
his mother had a room to spare, and could put us up for the night.

We fell upon his neck there in the moonlight and blessed him, and it 
would have made a very beautiful picture if the boy himself had not been 
so over-powered by our emotion as to be unable to sustain himself under 
it, and sunk to the ground, letting us all down on top of him.  Harris 
was so overcome with joy that he fainted, and had to seize the boy's 
beer-can and half empty it before he could recover consciousness, and 
then he started off at a run, and left George and me to bring on the 
luggage.

It was a little four-roomed cottage where the boy lived, and his mother - 
good soul! - gave us hot bacon for supper, and we ate it all - five 
pounds - and a jam tart afterwards, and two pots of tea, and then we went 
to bed.  There were two beds in the room; one was a 2ft. 6in. truckle 
bed, and George and I slept in that, and kept in by tying ourselves 
together with a sheet; and the other was the little boy's bed, and Harris 
had that all to himself, and we found him, in the morning, with two feet 
of bare leg sticking out at the bottom, and George and I used it to hang 
the towels on while we bathed.

We were not so uppish about what sort of hotel we would have, next time 
we went to Datchet.

To return to our present trip: nothing exciting happened, and we tugged 
steadily on to a little below Monkey Island, where we drew up and 
lunched.  We tackled the cold beef for lunch, and then we found that we 
had forgotten to bring any mustard.  I don't think I ever in my life, 
before or since, felt I wanted mustard as badly as I felt I wanted it 
then.  I don't care for mustard as a rule, and it is very seldom that I 
take it at all, but I would have given worlds for it then.

I don't know how many worlds there may be in the universe, but anyone who 
had brought me a spoonful of mustard at that precise moment could have 
had them all.  I grow reckless like that when I want a thing and can't 
get it.

Harris said he would have given worlds for mustard too.  It would have 
been a good thing for anybody who had come up to that spot with a can of 
mustard, then: he would have been set up in worlds for the rest of his 
life.

But there!  I daresay both Harris and I would have tried to back out of 
the bargain after we had got the mustard.  One makes these extravagant 
offers in moments of excitement, but, of course, when one comes to think 
of it, one sees how absurdly out of proportion they are with the value of 
the required article.  I heard a man, going up a mountain in Switzerland, 
once say he would give worlds for a glass of beer, and, when he came to a 
little shanty where they kept it, he kicked up a most fearful row because 
they charged him five francs for a bottle of Bass.  He said it was a 
scandalous imposition, and he wrote to the TIMES about it.

It cast a gloom over the boat, there being no mustard.  We ate our beef 
in silence.  Existence seemed hollow and uninteresting.  We thought of 
the happy days of childhood, and sighed.  We brightened up a bit, 
however, over the apple-tart, and, when George drew out a tin of pine-
apple from the bottom of the hamper, and rolled it into the middle of the 
boat, we felt that life was worth living after all.

We are very fond of pine-apple, all three of us.  We looked at the 
picture on the tin; we thought of the juice.  We smiled at one another, 
and Harris got a spoon ready.

Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with.  We turned out 
everything in the hamper.  We turned out the bags.  We pulled up the 
boards at the bottom of the boat.  We took everything out on to the bank 
and shook it.  There was no tin-opener to be found.

Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the 
knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the 
scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out.  While they were dressing 
their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of 
the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat 
and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, 
uninjured, and broke a teacup.

Then we all got mad.  We took that tin out on the bank, and Harris went 
up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat 
and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the 
sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and 
poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought 
it down.

It was George's straw hat that saved his life that day.  He keeps that 
hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter's evening, when the pipes 
are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they have 
passed through, George brings it down and shows it round, and the 
stirring tale is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time.

Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.

After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it with the mast 
till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harris took it in hand.

We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every 
form known to geometry - but we could not make a hole in it.  Then George 
went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so 
unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away 
the mast.  Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it.

There was one great dent across the top that had the appearance of a 
mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that Harris rushed at the 
thing, and caught it up, and flung it far into the middle of the river, 
and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat and 
rowed away from the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead.

Maidenhead itself is too snobby to be pleasant.  It is the haunt of the 
river swell and his overdressed female companion.  It is the town of 
showy hotels, patronised chiefly by dudes and ballet girls.  It is the 
witch's kitchen from which go forth those demons of the river - steam-
launches.  The LONDON JOURNAL duke always has his "little place" at 
Maidenhead; and the heroine of the three-volume novel always dines there 
when she goes out on the spree with somebody else's husband.

We went through Maidenhead quickly, and then eased up, and took leisurely 
that grand reach beyond Boulter's and Cookham locks.  Clieveden Woods 
still wore their dainty dress of spring, and rose up, from the water's 
edge, in one long harmony of blended shades of fairy green.  In its 
unbroken loveliness this is, perhaps, the sweetest stretch of all the 
river, and lingeringly we slowly drew our little boat away from its deep 
peace.

We pulled up in the backwater, just below Cookham, and had tea; and, when 
we were through the lock, it was evening.  A stiffish breeze had sprung 
up - in our favour, for a wonder; for, as a rule on the river, the wind 
is always dead against you whatever way you go.  It is against you in the 
morning, when you start for a day's trip, and you pull a long distance, 
thinking how easy it will be to come back with the sail.  Then, after 
tea, the wind veers round, and you have to pull hard in its teeth all the 
way home.

When you forget to take the sail at all, then the wind is consistently in 
your favour both ways.  But there! this world is only a probation, and 
man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.

This evening, however, they had evidently made a mistake, and had put the 
wind round at our back instead of in our face.  We kept very quiet about 
it, and got the sail up quickly before they found it out, and then we 
spread ourselves about the boat in thoughtful attitudes, and the sail 
bellied out, and strained, and grumbled at the mast, and the boat flew.

I steered.

There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing.  It comes as 
near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams.  The wings of 
the rushing wind seem to be bearing you onward, you know not where.  You 
are no longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creeping tortuously 
upon the ground; you are a part of Nature!  Your heart is throbbing 
against hers!  Her glorious arms are round you, raising you up against 
her heart!  Your spirit is at one with hers; your limbs grow light!  The 
voices of the air are singing to you.  The earth seems far away and 
little; and the clouds, so close above your head, are brothers, and you 
stretch your arms to them.

We had the river to ourselves, except that, far in the distance, we could 
see a fishing-punt, moored in mid-stream, on which three fishermen sat; 
and we skimmed over the water, and passed the wooded banks, and no one 
spoke.

I was steering.

As we drew nearer, we could see that the three men fishing seemed old and 
solemn-looking men.  They sat on three chairs in the punt, and watched 
intently their lines.  And the red sunset threw a mystic light upon the 
waters, and tinged with fire the towering woods, and made a golden glory 
of the piled-up clouds.  It was an hour of deep enchantment, of ecstatic 
hope and longing.  The little sail stood out against the purple sky, the 
gloaming lay around us, wrapping the world in rainbow shadows; and, 
behind us, crept the night.

We seemed like knights of some old legend, sailing across some mystic 
lake into the unknown realm of twilight, unto the great land of the 
sunset.

We did not go into the realm of twilight; we went slap into that punt, 
where those three old men were fishing.  We did not know what had 
happened at first, because the sail shut out the view, but from the 
nature of the language that rose up upon the evening air, we gathered 
that we had come into the neighbourhood of human beings, and that they 
were vexed and discontented.

Harris let the sail down, and then we saw what had happened.  We had 
knocked those three old gentlemen off their chairs into a general heap at 
the bottom of the boat, and they were now slowly and painfully sorting 
themselves out from each other, and picking fish off themselves; and as 
they worked, they cursed us - not with a common cursory curse, but with 
long, carefully-thought-out, comprehensive curses, that embraced the 
whole of our career, and went away into the distant future, and included 
all our relations, and covered everything connected with us - good, 
substantial curses.

Harris told them they ought to be grateful for a little excitement, 
sitting there fishing all day, and he also said that he was shocked and 
grieved to hear men their age give way to temper so.

But it did not do any good.

George said he would steer, after that.  He said a mind like mine ought 
not to be expected to give itself away in steering boats - better let a 
mere commonplace human being see after that boat, before we jolly well 
all got drowned; and he took the lines, and brought us up to Marlow.

And at Marlow we left the boat by the bridge, and went and put up for the 
night at the "Crown."




CHAPTER XIII.


MARLOW. - BISHAM ABBEY. - THE MEDMENHAM MONKS. - MONTMORENCY THINKS HE 
WILL MURDER AN OLD TOM CAT. - BUT EVENTUALLY DECIDES THAT HE WILL LET IT 
LIVE. - SHAMEFUL CONDUCT OF A FOX TERRIER AT THE CIVIL SERVICE STORES. - 
OUR DEPARTURE FROM MARLOW. - AN IMPOSING PROCESSION. - THE STEAM LAUNCH, 
USEFUL RECEIPTS FOR ANNOYING AND HINDERING IT. - WE DECLINE TO DRINK THE 
RIVER. - A PEACEFUL DOG. - STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF HARRIS AND A PIE.

MARLOW is one of the pleasantest river centres I know of.  It is a 
bustling, lively little town; not very picturesque on the whole, it is 
true, but there are many quaint nooks and corners to be found in it, 
nevertheless - standing arches in the shattered bridge of Time, over 
which our fancy travels back to the days when Marlow Manor owned Saxon 
Algar for its lord, ere conquering William seized it to give to Queen 
Matilda, ere it passed to the Earls of Warwick or to worldly-wise Lord 
Paget, the councillor of four successive sovereigns.

There is lovely country round about it, too, if, after boating, you are 
fond of a walk, while the river itself is at its best here.  Down to 
Cookham, past the Quarry Woods and the meadows, is a lovely reach.  Dear 
old Quarry Woods! with your narrow, climbing paths, and little winding 
glades, how scented to this hour you seem with memories of sunny summer 
days!  How haunted are your shadowy vistas with the ghosts of laughing 
faces! how from your whispering leaves there softly fall the voices of 
long ago!

From Marlow up to Sonning is even fairer yet.  Grand old Bisham Abbey, 
whose stone walls have rung to the shouts of the Knights Templars, and 
which, at one time, was the home of Anne of Cleves and at another of 
Queen Elizabeth, is passed on the right bank just half a mile above 
Marlow Bridge.  Bisham Abbey is rich in melodramatic properties.  It 
contains a tapestry bed-chamber, and a secret room hid high up in the 
thick walls.  The ghost of the Lady Holy, who beat her little boy to 
death, still walks there at night, trying to wash its ghostly hands clean 
in a ghostly basin.

Warwick, the king-maker, rests there, careless now about such trivial 
things as earthly kings and earthly kingdoms; and Salisbury, who did good 
service at Poitiers.  Just before you come to the abbey, and right on the 
river's bank, is Bisham Church, and, perhaps, if any tombs are worth 
inspecting, they are the tombs and monuments in Bisham Church.  It was 
while floating in his boat under the Bisham beeches that Shelley, who was 
then living at Marlow (you can see his house now, in West street), 
composed THE REVOLT OF ISLAM.

By Hurley Weir, a little higher up, I have often thought that I could 
stay a month without having sufficient time to drink in all the beauty of 
the scene.  The village of Hurley, five minutes' walk from the lock, is 
as old a little spot as there is on the river, dating, as it does, to 
quote the quaint phraseology of those dim days, "from the times of King 
Sebert and King Offa."  Just past the weir (going up) is Danes' Field, 
where the invading Danes once encamped, during their march to 
Gloucestershire; and a little further still, nestling by a sweet corner 
of the stream, is what is left of Medmenham Abbey.

The famous Medmenham monks, or "Hell Fire Club," as they were commonly 
called, and of whom the notorious Wilkes was a member, were a fraternity 
whose motto was "Do as you please," and that invitation still stands over 
the ruined doorway of the abbey.  Many years before this bogus abbey, 
with its congregation of irreverent jesters, was founded, there stood 
upon this same spot a monastery of a sterner kind, whose monks were of a 
somewhat different type to the revellers that were to follow them, five 
hundred years afterwards.

The Cistercian monks, whose abbey stood there in the thirteenth century, 
wore no clothes but rough tunics and cowls, and ate no flesh, nor fish, 
nor eggs.  They lay upon straw, and they rose at midnight to mass.  They 
spent the day in labour, reading, and prayer; and over all their lives 
there fell a silence as of death, for no one spoke.

A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had 
made so bright!  Strange that Nature's voices all around them - the soft 
singing of the waters, the whisperings of the river grass, the music of 
the rushing wind - should not have taught them a truer meaning of life 
than this.  They listened there, through the long days, in silence, 
waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn 
night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.

From Medmenham to sweet Hambledon Lock the river is full of peaceful 
beauty, but, after it passes Greenlands, the rather uninteresting looking 
river residence of my newsagent - a quiet unassuming old gentleman, who 
may often be met with about these regions, during the summer months, 
sculling himself along in easy vigorous style, or chatting genially to 
some old lock-keeper, as he passes through - until well the other side of 
Henley, it is somewhat bare and dull.

We got up tolerably early on the Monday morning at Marlow, and went for a 
bathe before breakfast; and, coming back, Montmorency made an awful ass 
of himself.  The only subject on which Montmorency and I have any serious 
difference of opinion is cats.  I like cats; Montmorency does not.

When I meet a cat, I say, "Poor Pussy!" and stop down and tickle the side 
of its head; and the cat sticks up its tail in a rigid, cast-iron manner, 
arches its back, and wipes its nose up against my trousers; and all is 
gentleness and peace.  When Montmorency meets a cat, the whole street 
knows about it; and there is enough bad language wasted in ten seconds to 
last an ordinarily respectable man all his life, with care.

I do not blame the dog (contenting myself, as a rule, with merely 
clouting his head or throwing stones at him), because I take it that it 
is his nature.  Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much 
original sin in them as other dogs are, and it will take years and years 
of patient effort on the part of us Christians to bring about any 
appreciable reformation in the rowdiness of the fox-terrier nature.

I remember being in the lobby of the Haymarket Stores one day, and all 
round about me were dogs, waiting for the return of their owners, who 
were shopping inside.  There were a mastiff, and one or two collies, and 
a St. Bernard, a few retrievers and Newfoundlands, a boar-hound, a French 
poodle, with plenty of hair round its head, but mangy about the middle; a 
bull-dog, a few Lowther Arcade sort of animals, about the size of rats, 
and a couple of Yorkshire tykes.

There they sat, patient, good, and thoughtful.  A solemn peacefulness 
seemed to reign in that lobby.  An air of calmness and resignation - of 
gentle sadness pervaded the room.

Then a sweet young lady entered, leading a meek-looking little fox-
terrier, and left him, chained up there, between the bull-dog and the 
poodle.  He sat and looked about him for a minute.  Then he cast up his 
eyes to the ceiling, and seemed, judging from his expression, to be 
thinking of his mother.  Then he yawned.  Then he looked round at the 
other dogs, all silent, grave, and dignified.

He looked at the bull-dog, sleeping dreamlessly on his right.  He looked 
at the poodle, erect and haughty, on his left.  Then, without a word of 
warning, without the shadow of a provocation, he bit that poodle's near 
fore-leg, and a yelp of agony rang through the quiet shades of that 
lobby.

The result of his first experiment seemed highly satisfactory to him, and 
he determined to go on and make things lively all round.  He sprang over 
the poodle and vigorously attacked a collie, and the collie woke up, and 
immediately commenced a fierce and noisy contest with the poodle.  Then 
Foxey came back to his own place, and caught the bull-dog by the ear, and 
tried to throw him away; and the bull-dog, a curiously impartial animal, 
went for everything he could reach, including the hall-porter, which gave 
that dear little terrier the opportunity to enjoy an uninterrupted fight 
of his own with an equally willing Yorkshire tyke.

Anyone who knows canine nature need hardly, be told that, by this time, 
all the other dogs in the place were fighting as if their hearths and 
homes depended on the fray.  The big dogs fought each other 
indiscriminately; and the little dogs fought among themselves, and filled 
up their spare time by biting the legs of the big dogs.

The whole lobby was a perfect pandemonium, and the din was terrific.  A 
crowd assembled outside in the Haymarket, and asked if it was a vestry 
meeting; or, if not, who was being murdered, and why?  Men came with 
poles and ropes, and tried to separate the dogs, and the police were sent 
for.

And in the midst of the riot that sweet young lady returned, and snatched 
up that sweet little dog of hers (he had laid the tyke up for a month, 
and had on the expression, now, of a new-born lamb) into her arms, and 
kissed him, and asked him if he was killed, and what those great nasty 
brutes of dogs had been doing to him; and he nestled up against her, and 
gazed up into her face with a look that seemed to say: "Oh, I'm so glad 
you've come to take me away from this disgraceful scene!"

She said that the people at the Stores had no right to allow great savage 
things like those other dogs to be put with respectable people's dogs, 
and that she had a great mind to summon somebody.

Such is the nature of fox-terriers; and, therefore, I do not blame 
Montmorency for his tendency to row with cats; but he wished he had not 
given way to it that morning.

We were, as I have said, returning from a dip, and half-way up the High 
Street a cat darted out from one of the houses in front of us, and began 
to trot across the road.  Montmorency gave a cry of joy - the cry of a 
stern warrior who sees his enemy given over to his hands - the sort of 
cry Cromwell might have uttered when the Scots came down the hill - and 
flew after his prey.

His victim was a large black Tom.  I never saw a larger cat, nor a more 
disreputable-looking cat.  It had lost half its tail, one of its ears, 
and a fairly appreciable proportion of its nose.  It was a long, sinewy-
looking animal.  It had a calm, contented air about it.

Montmorency went for that poor cat at the rate of twenty miles an hour; 
but the cat did not hurry up - did not seem to have grasped the idea that 
its life was in danger.  It trotted quietly on until its would-be 
assassin was within a yard of it, and then it turned round and sat down 
in the middle of the road, and looked at Montmorency with a gentle, 
inquiring expression, that said:

"Yes!  You want me?"

Montmorency does not lack pluck; but there was something about the look 
of that cat that might have chilled the heart of the boldest dog.  He 
stopped abruptly, and looked back at Tom.

Neither spoke; but the conversation that one could imagine was clearly as 
follows:-

THE CAT: "Can I do anything for you?"

MONTMORENCY: "No - no, thanks."

THE CAT: "Don't you mind speaking, if you really want anything, you 
know."

MONTMORENCY (BACKING DOWN THE HIGH STREET): "Oh, no - not at all - 
certainly - don't you trouble.  I - I am afraid I've made a mistake.  I 
thought I knew you.  Sorry I disturbed you."

THE CAT: "Not at all - quite a pleasure.  Sure you don't want anything, 
now?"

MONTMORENCY (STILL BACKING): "Not at all, thanks - not at all - very kind 
of you.  Good morning."

THE CAT: "Good-morning."

Then the cat rose, and continued his trot; and Montmorency, fitting what 
he calls his tail carefully into its groove, came back to us, and took up 
an unimportant position in the rear.

To this day, if you say the word "Cats!" to Montmorency, he will visibly 
shrink and look up piteously at you, as if to say:

"Please don't."

We did our marketing after breakfast, and revictualled the boat for three 
days.  George said we ought to take vegetables - that it was unhealthy 
not to eat vegetables.  He said they were easy enough to cook, and that 
he would see to that; so we got ten pounds of potatoes, a bushel of peas, 
and a few cabbages.  We got a beefsteak pie, a couple of gooseberry 
tarts, and a leg of mutton from the hotel; and fruit, and cakes, and 
bread and butter, and jam, and bacon and eggs, and other things we 
foraged round about the town for.

Our departure from Marlow I regard as one of our greatest successes.  It 
was dignified and impressive, without being ostentatious.  We had 
insisted at all the shops we had been to that the things should be sent 
with us then and there.  None of your "Yes, sir, I will send them off at 
once: the boy will be down there before you are, sir!" and then fooling 
about on the landing-stage, and going back to the shop twice to have a 
row about them, for us.  We waited while the basket was packed, and took 
the boy with us.

We went to a good many shops, adopting this principle at each one; and 
the consequence was that, by the time we had finished, we had as fine a 
collection of boys with baskets following us around as heart could 
desire; and our final march down the middle of the High Street, to the 
river, must have been as imposing a spectacle as Marlow had seen for many 
a long day.

The order of the procession was as follows:-


Montmorency, carrying a stick.
Two disreputable-looking curs, friends of Montmorency's.
George, carrying coats and rugs, and smoking a short pipe.
Harris, trying to walk with easy grace,
while carrying a bulged-out Gladstone bag in one hand
and a bottle of lime-juice in the other.
Greengrocer's boy and baker's boy,
with baskets.
Boots from the hotel, carrying hamper.
Confectioner's boy, with basket.
Grocer's boy, with basket.
Long-haired dog.
Cheesemonger's boy, with basket.
Odd man carrying a bag.
Bosom companion of odd man, with his hands in his pockets,
smoking a short clay.
Fruiterer's boy, with basket.
Myself, carrying three hats and a pair of boots,
and trying to look as if I didn't know it.
Six small boys, and four stray dogs.


When we got down to the landing-stage, the boatman said:

"Let me see, sir; was yours a steam-launch or a house-boat?"

On our informing him it was a double-sculling skiff, he seemed surprised.

We had a good deal of trouble with steam launches that morning.  It was 
just before the Henley week, and they were going up in large numbers; 
some by themselves, some towing houseboats.  I do hate steam launches: I 
suppose every rowing man does.  I never see a steam launch but I feel I 
should like to lure it to a lonely part of the river, and there, in the 
silence and the solitude, strangle it.

There is a blatant bumptiousness about a steam launch that has the knack 
of rousing every evil instinct in my nature, and I yearn for the good old 
days, when you could go about and tell people what you thought of them 
with a hatchet and a bow and arrows.  The expression on the face of the 
man who, with his hands in his pockets, stands by the stern, smoking a 
cigar, is sufficient to excuse a breach of the peace by itself; and the 
lordly whistle for you to get out of the way would, I am confident, 
ensure a verdict of "justifiable homicide" from any jury of river men.

They used to HAVE to whistle for us to get out of their way.  If I may do 
so, without appearing boastful, I think I can honestly say that our one 
small boat, during that week, caused more annoyance and delay and 
aggravation to the steam launches that we came across than all the other 
craft on the river put together.

"Steam launch, coming!" one of us would cry out, on sighting the enemy in 
the distance; and, in an instant, everything was got ready to receive 
her.  I would take the lines, and Harris and George would sit down beside 
me, all of us with our backs to the launch, and the boat would drift out 
quietly into mid-stream.

On would come the launch, whistling, and on we would go, drifting.  At 
about a hundred yards off, she would start whistling like mad, and the 
people would come and lean over the side, and roar at us; but we never 
heard them!  Harris would be telling us an anecdote about his mother, and 
George and I would not have missed a word of it for worlds.

Then that launch would give one final shriek of a whistle that would 
nearly burst the boiler, and she would reverse her engines, and blow off 
steam, and swing round and get aground; everyone on board of it would 
rush to the bow and yell at us, and the people on the bank would stand 
and shout to us, and all the other passing boats would stop and join in, 
till the whole river for miles up and down was in a state of frantic 
commotion.  And then Harris would break off in the most interesting part 
of his narrative, and look up with mild surprise, and say to George:

"Why, George, bless me, if here isn't a steam launch!"

And George would answer:

"Well, do you know, I THOUGHT I heard something!"

Upon which we would get nervous and confused, and not know how to get the 
boat out of the way, and the people in the launch would crowd round and 
instruct us:

"Pull your right - you, you idiot! back with your left.  No, not YOU - 
the other one - leave the lines alone, can't you - now, both together.  
NOT THAT way.  Oh, you - !"

Then they would lower a boat and come to our assistance; and, after 
quarter of an hour's effort, would get us clean out of their way, so that 
they could go on; and we would thank them so much, and ask them to give 
us a tow.  But they never would.

Another good way we discovered of irritating the aristocratic type of 
steam launch, was to mistake them for a beanfeast, and ask them if they 
were Messrs. Cubit's lot or the Bermondsey Good Templars, and could they 
lend us a saucepan.

Old ladies, not accustomed to the river, are always intensely nervous of 
steam launches.  I remember going up once from Staines to Windsor - a 
stretch of water peculiarly rich in these mechanical monstrosities - with 
a party containing three ladies of this description.  It was very 
exciting.  At the first glimpse of every steam launch that came in view, 
they insisted on landing and sitting down on the bank until it was out of 
sight again.  They said they were very sorry, but that they owed it to 
their families not to be fool-hardy.

We found ourselves short of water at Hambledon Lock; so we took our jar 
and went up to the lock-keeper's house to beg for some.

George was our spokesman.  He put on a winning smile, and said:

"Oh, please could you spare us a little water?"

"Certainly," replied the old gentleman; "take as much as you want, and 
leave the rest."

"Thank you so much," murmured George, looking about him.  "Where - where 
do you keep it?"

"It's always in the same place my boy," was the stolid reply: "just 
behind you."

"I don't see it," said George, turning round.

"Why, bless us, where's your eyes?" was the man's comment, as he twisted 
George round and pointed up and down the stream.  "There's enough of it 
to see, ain't there?"

"Oh!" exclaimed George, grasping the idea; "but we can't drink the river, 
you know!"

"No; but you can drink SOME of it," replied the old fellow.  "It's what 
I've drunk for the last fifteen years."

George told him that his appearance, after the course, did not seem a 
sufficiently good advertisement for the brand; and that he would prefer 
it out of a pump.

We got some from a cottage a little higher up.  I daresay THAT was only 
river water, if we had known.  But we did not know, so it was all right.  
What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over.

We tried river water once, later on in the season, but it was not a 
success.  We were coming down stream, and had pulled up to have tea in a 
backwater near Windsor.  Our jar was empty, and it was a case of going 
without our tea or taking water from the river.  Harris was for chancing 
it.  He said it must be all right if we boiled the water.  He said that 
the various germs of poison present in the water would be killed by the 
boiling.  So we filled our kettle with Thames backwater, and boiled it; 
and very careful we were to see that it did boil.

We had made the tea, and were just settling down comfortably to drink it, 
when George, with his cup half-way to his lips, paused and exclaimed:

"What's that?"

"What's what?" asked Harris and I.

"Why that!" said George, looking westward.

Harris and I followed his gaze, and saw, coming down towards us on the 
sluggish current, a dog.  It was one of the quietest and peacefullest 
dogs I have ever seen.  I never met a dog who seemed more contented - 
more easy in its mind.  It was floating dreamily on its back, with its 
four legs stuck up straight into the air.  It was what I should call a 
full-bodied dog, with a well-developed chest.  On he came, serene, 
dignified, and calm, until he was abreast of our boat, and there, among 
the rushes, he eased up, and settled down cosily for the evening.

George said he didn't want any tea, and emptied his cup into the water.  
Harris did not feel thirsty, either, and followed suit.  I had drunk half 
mine, but I wished I had not.

I asked George if he thought I was likely to have typhoid.

He said: "Oh, no;" he thought I had a very good chance indeed of escaping 
it.  Anyhow, I should know in about a fortnight, whether I had or had 
not.

We went up the backwater to Wargrave.  It is a short cut, leading out of 
the right-hand bank about half a mile above Marsh Lock, and is well worth 
taking, being a pretty, shady little piece of stream, besides saving 
nearly half a mile of distance.

Of course, its entrance is studded with posts and chains, and surrounded 
with notice boards, menacing all kinds of torture, imprisonment, and 
death to everyone who dares set scull upon its waters - I wonder some of 
these riparian boors don't claim the air of the river and threaten 
everyone with forty shillings fine who breathes it - but the posts and 
chains a little skill will easily avoid; and as for the boards, you 
might, if you have five minutes to spare, and there is nobody about, take 
one or two of them down and throw them into the river.

Half-way up the backwater, we got out and lunched; and it was during this 
lunch that George and I received rather a trying shock.

Harris received a shock, too; but I do not think Harris's shock could 
have been anything like so bad as the shock that George and I had over 
the business.

You see, it was in this way: we were sitting in a meadow, about ten yards 
from the water's edge, and we had just settled down comfortably to feed.  
Harris had the beefsteak pie between his knees, and was carving it, and 
George and I were waiting with our plates ready.

"Have you got a spoon there?" says Harris; "I want a spoon to help the 
gravy with."

The hamper was close behind us, and George and I both turned round to 
reach one out.  We were not five seconds getting it.  When we looked 
round again, Harris and the pie were gone!

It was a wide, open field.  There was not a tree or a bit of hedge for 
hundreds of yards.  He could not have tumbled into the river, because we 
were on the water side of him, and he would have had to climb over us to 
do it.

George and I gazed all about.  Then we gazed at each other.

"Has he been snatched up to heaven?" I queried.

"They'd hardly have taken the pie too," said George.

There seemed weight in this objection, and we discarded the heavenly 
theory.

"I suppose the truth of the matter is," suggested George, descending to 
the commonplace and practicable, "that there has been an earthquake."

And then he added, with a touch of sadness in his voice: "I wish he 
hadn't been carving that pie."

With a sigh, we turned our eyes once more towards the spot where Harris 
and the pie had last been seen on earth; and there, as our blood froze in 
our veins and our hair stood up on end, we saw Harris's head - and 
nothing but his head - sticking bolt upright among the tall grass, the 
face very red, and bearing upon it an expression of great indignation!

George was the first to recover.

"Speak!" he cried, "and tell us whether you are alive or dead - and where 
is the rest of you?"

"Oh, don't be a stupid ass!" said Harris's head.  "I believe you did it 
on purpose."

"Did what?" exclaimed George and I.

" Why, put me to sit here - darn silly trick!  Here, catch hold of the 
pie."

And out of the middle of the earth, as it seemed to us, rose the pie - 
very much mixed up and damaged; and, after it, scrambled Harris - 
tumbled, grubby, and wet.

He had been sitting, without knowing it, on the very verge of a small 
gully, the long grass hiding it from view; and in leaning a little back 
he had shot over, pie and all.

He said he had never felt so surprised in all his life, as when he first 
felt himself going, without being able to conjecture in the slightest 
what had happened.  He thought at first that the end of the world had 
come.

Harris believes to this day that George and I planned it all beforehand.  
Thus does unjust suspicion follow even the most blameless for, as the 
poet says, "Who shall escape calumny?"

Who, indeed!




CHAPTER XIV.


WARGRAVE. - WAXWORKS. - SONNING. - OUR STEW. - MONTMORENCY IS SARCASTIC. 
- FIGHT BETWEEN MONTMORENCY AND THE TEA-KETTLE. - GEORGE'S BANJO STUDIES. 
- MEET WITH DISCOURAGEMENT. - DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF THE MUSICAL 
AMATEUR. - LEARNING TO PLAY THE BAGPIPES. - HARRIS FEELS SAD AFTER 
SUPPER. - GEORGE AND I GO FOR A WALK. - RETURN HUNGRY AND WET. - THERE IS 
A STRANGENESS ABOUT HARRIS. - HARRIS AND THE SWANS, A REMARKABLE STORY. - 
HARRIS HAS A TROUBLED NIGHT.

WE caught a breeze, after lunch, which took us gently up past Wargrave 
and Shiplake.  Mellowed in the drowsy sunlight of a summer's afternoon, 
Wargrave, nestling where the river bends, makes a sweet old picture as 
you pass it, and one that lingers long upon the retina of memory.

The "George and Dragon" at Wargrave boasts a sign, painted on the one 
side by Leslie, R.A., and on the other by Hodgson of that ilk.  Leslie 
has depicted the fight; Hodgson has imagined the scene, "After the Fight" 
- George, the work done, enjoying his pint of beer.

Day, the author of SANDFORD AND MERTON, lived and - more credit to the 
place still - was killed at Wargrave.  In the church is a memorial to 
Mrs. Sarah Hill, who bequeathed 1 pound annually, to be divided at 
Easter, between two boys and two girls who "have never been undutiful to 
their parents; who have never been known to swear or to tell untruths, to 
steal, or to break windows."  Fancy giving up all that for five shillings 
a year!  It is not worth it.

It is rumoured in the town that once, many years ago, a boy appeared who 
really never had done these things - or at all events, which was all that 
was required or could be expected, had never been known to do them - and 
thus won the crown of glory.  He was exhibited for three weeks afterwards 
in the Town Hall, under a glass case.

What has become of the money since no one knows.  They say it is always 
handed over to the nearest wax-works show.

Shiplake is a pretty village, but it cannot be seen from the river, being 
upon the hill.  Tennyson was married in Shiplake Church.

The river up to Sonning winds in and out through many islands, and is 
very placid, hushed, and lonely.  Few folk, except at twilight, a pair or 
two of rustic lovers, walk along its banks.  `Arry and Lord Fitznoodle 
have been left behind at Henley, and dismal, dirty Reading is not yet 
reached.  It is a part of the river in which to dream of bygone days, and 
vanished forms and faces, and things that might have been, but are not, 
confound them.

We got out at Sonning, and went for a walk round the village.  It is the 
most fairy-like little nook on the whole river.  It is more like a stage 
village than one built of bricks and mortar.  Every house is smothered in 
roses, and now, in early June, they were bursting forth in clouds of 
dainty splendour.  If you stop at Sonning, put up at the "Bull," behind 
the church.  It is a veritable picture of an old country inn, with green, 
square courtyard in front, where, on seats beneath the trees, the old men 
group of an evening to drink their ale and gossip over village politics; 
with low, quaint rooms and latticed windows, and awkward stairs and 
winding passages.

We roamed about sweet Sonning for an hour or so, and then, it being too 
late to push on past Reading, we decided to go back to one of the 
Shiplake islands, and put up there for the night.  It was still early 
when we got settled, and George said that, as we had plenty of time, it 
would be a splendid opportunity to try a good, slap-up supper.  He said 
he would show us what could be done up the river in the way of cooking, 
and suggested that, with the vegetables and the remains of the cold beef 
and general odds and ends, we should make an Irish stew.

It seemed a fascinating idea.  George gathered wood and made a fire, and 
Harris and I started to peel the potatoes.  I should never have thought 
that peeling potatoes was such an undertaking.  The job turned out to be 
the biggest thing of its kind that I had ever been in.  We began 
cheerfully, one might almost say skittishly, but our light-heartedness 
was gone by the time the first potato was finished.  The more we peeled, 
the more peel there seemed to be left on; by the time we had got all the 
peel off and all the eyes out, there was no potato left - at least none 
worth speaking of.  George came and had a look at it - it was about the 
size of a pea-nut.  He said:

"Oh, that won't do!  You're wasting them.  You must scrape them."

So we scraped them, and that was harder work than peeling.  They are such 
an extraordinary shape, potatoes - all bumps and warts and hollows.  We 
worked steadily for five-and-twenty minutes, and did four potatoes.  Then 
we struck.  We said we should require the rest of the evening for 
scraping ourselves.

I never saw such a thing as potato-scraping for making a fellow in a 
mess.  It seemed difficult to believe that the potato-scrapings in which 
Harris and I stood, half smothered, could have come off four potatoes.  
It shows you what can be done with economy and care.

George said it was absurd to have only four potatoes in an Irish stew, so 
we washed half-a-dozen or so more, and put them in without peeling.  We 
also put in a cabbage and about half a peck of peas.  George stirred it 
all up, and then he said that there seemed to be a lot of room to spare, 
so we overhauled both the hampers, and picked out all the odds and ends 
and the remnants, and added them to the stew.  There were half a pork pie 
and a bit of cold boiled bacon left, and we put them in.  Then George 
found half a tin of potted salmon, and he emptied that into the pot.

He said that was the advantage of Irish stew: you got rid of such a lot 
of things.  I fished out a couple of eggs that had got cracked, and put 
those in.  George said they would thicken the gravy.

I forget the other ingredients, but I know nothing was wasted; and I 
remember that, towards the end, Montmorency, who had evinced great 
interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest and 
thoughtful air, reappearing, a few minutes afterwards, with a dead water-
rat in his mouth, which he evidently wished to present as his 
contribution to the dinner; whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a 
genuine desire to assist, I cannot say.

We had a discussion as to whether the rat should go in or not.  Harris 
said that he thought it would be all right, mixed up with the other 
things, and that every little helped; but George stood up for precedent.  
He said he had never heard of water-rats in Irish stew, and he would 
rather be on the safe side, and not try experiments.

Harris said:

"If you never try a new thing, how can you tell what it's like?  It's men 
such as you that hamper the world's progress.  Think of the man who first 
tried German sausage!"

It was a great success, that Irish stew.  I don't think I ever enjoyed a 
meal more.  There was something so fresh and piquant about it.  One's 
palate gets so tired of the old hackneyed things: here was a dish with a 
new flavour, with a taste like nothing else on earth.

And it was nourishing, too.  As George said, there was good stuff in it.  
The peas and potatoes might have been a bit softer, but we all had good 
teeth, so that did not matter much: and as for the gravy, it was a poem - 
a little too rich, perhaps, for a weak stomach, but nutritious.

We finished up with tea and cherry tart.  Montmorency had a fight with 
the kettle during tea-time, and came off a poor second.

Throughout the trip, he had manifested great curiosity concerning the 
kettle.  He would sit and watch it, as it boiled, with a puzzled 
expression, and would try and rouse it every now and then by growling at 
it.  When it began to splutter and steam, he regarded it as a challenge, 
and would want to fight it, only, at that precise moment, some one would 
always dash up and bear off his prey before he could get at it.

To-day he determined he would be beforehand.  At the first sound the 
kettle made, he rose, growling, and advanced towards it in a threatening 
attitude.  It was only a little kettle, but it was full of pluck, and it 
up and spit at him.

"Ah! would ye!" growled Montmorency, showing his teeth; "I'll teach ye to 
cheek a hard-working, respectable dog; ye miserable, long-nosed, dirty-
looking scoundrel, ye.  Come on!"

And he rushed at that poor little kettle, and seized it by the spout.

Then, across the evening stillness, broke a blood-curdling yelp, and 
Montmorency left the boat, and did a constitutional three times round the 
island at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour, stopping every now and 
then to bury his nose in a bit of cool mud.

From that day Montmorency regarded the kettle with a mixture of awe, 
suspicion, and hate.  Whenever he saw it he would growl and back at a 
rapid rate, with his tail shut down, and the moment it was put upon the 
stove he would promptly climb out of the boat, and sit on the bank, till 
the whole tea business was over.

George got out his banjo after supper, and wanted to play it, but Harris 
objected: he said he had got a headache, and did not feel strong enough 
to stand it.  George thought the music might do him good - said music 
often soothed the nerves and took away a headache; and he twanged two or 
three notes, just to show Harris what it was like.

Harris said he would rather have the headache.

George has never learned to play the banjo to this day.  He has had too 
much all-round discouragement to meet.  He tried on two or three 
evenings, while we were up the river, to get a little practice, but it 
was never a success.  Harris's language used to be enough to unnerve any 
man; added to which, Montmorency would sit and howl steadily, right 
through the performance.  It was not giving the man a fair chance.

"What's he want to howl like that for when I'm playing?" George would 
exclaim indignantly, while taking aim at him with a boot.

"What do you want to play like that for when he is howling?" Harris would 
retort, catching the boot.  "You let him alone.  He can't help howling.  
He's got a musical ear, and your playing MAKES him howl."

So George determined to postpone study of the banjo until he reached 
home.  But he did not get much opportunity even there.  Mrs. P. used to 
come up and say she was very sorry - for herself, she liked to hear him - 
but the lady upstairs was in a very delicate state, and the doctor was 
afraid it might injure the child.

Then George tried taking it out with him late at night, and practising 
round the square.  But the inhabitants complained to the police about it, 
and a watch was set for him one night, and he was captured.  The evidence 
against him was very clear, and he was bound over to keep the peace for 
six months.

He seemed to lose heart in the business after that.  He did make one or 
two feeble efforts to take up the work again when the six months had 
elapsed, but there was always the same coldness - the same want of 
sympathy on the part of the world to fight against; and, after awhile, he 
despaired altogether, and advertised the instrument for sale at a great 
sacrifice - "owner having no further use for same" - and took to learning 
card tricks instead.

It must be disheartening work learning a musical instrument.  You would 
think that Society, for its own sake, would do all it could to assist a 
man to acquire the art of playing a musical instrument.  But it doesn't!

I knew a young fellow once, who was studying to play the bagpipes, and 
you would be surprised at the amount of opposition he had to contend 
with.  Why, not even from the members of his own family did he receive 
what you could call active encouragement.  His father was dead against 
the business from the beginning, and spoke quite unfeelingly on the 
subject.

My friend used to get up early in the morning to practise, but he had to 
give that plan up, because of his sister.  She was somewhat religiously 
inclined, and she said it seemed such an awful thing to begin the day 
like that.

So he sat up at night instead, and played after the family had gone to 
bed, but that did not do, as it got the house such a bad name.  People, 
going home late, would stop outside to listen, and then put it about all 
over the town, the next morning, that a fearful murder had been committed 
at Mr. Jefferson's the night before; and would describe how they had 
heard the victim's shrieks and the brutal oaths and curses of the 
murderer, followed by the prayer for mercy, and the last dying gurgle of 
the corpse.

So they let him practise in the day-time, in the back-kitchen with all 
the doors shut; but his more successful passages could generally be heard 
in the sitting-room, in spite of these precautions, and would affect his 
mother almost to tears.

She said it put her in mind of her poor father (he had been swallowed by 
a shark, poor man, while bathing off the coast of New Guinea - where the 
connection came in, she could not explain).

Then they knocked up a little place for him at the bottom of the garden, 
about quarter of a mile from the house, and made him take the machine 
down there when he wanted to work it; and sometimes a visitor would come 
to the house who knew nothing of the matter, and they would forget to 
tell him all about it, and caution him, and he would go out for a stroll 
round the garden and suddenly get within earshot of those bagpipes, 
without being prepared for it, or knowing what it was.  If he were a man 
of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average 
intellect it usually sent mad.

There is, it must be confessed, something very sad about the early 
efforts of an amateur in bagpipes.  I have felt that myself when 
listening to my young friend.  They appear to be a trying instrument to 
perform upon.  You have to get enough breath for the whole tune before 
you start - at least, so I gathered from watching Jefferson.

He would begin magnificently with a wild, full, come-to-the-battle sort 
of a note, that quite roused you.  But he would get more and more piano 
as he went on, and the last verse generally collapsed in the middle with 
a splutter and a hiss.

You want to be in good health to play the bagpipes.

Young Jefferson only learnt to play one tune on those bagpipes; but I 
never heard any complaints about the insufficiency of his repertoire - 
none whatever.  This tune was "The Campbells are Coming, Hooray - 
Hooray!" so he said, though his father always held that it was "The Blue 
Bells of Scotland."  Nobody seemed quite sure what it was exactly, but 
they all agreed that it sounded Scotch.

Strangers were allowed three guesses, and most of them guessed a 
different tune each time.

Harris was disagreeable after supper, - I think it must have been the 
stew that had upset him: he is not used to high living, - so George and I 
left him in the boat, and settled to go for a mouch round Henley.  He 
said he should have a glass of whisky and a pipe, and fix things up for 
the night.  We were to shout when we returned, and he would row over from 
the island and fetch us.

"Don't go to sleep, old man," we said as we started.

"Not much fear of that while this stew's on," he grunted, as he pulled 
back to the island.

Henley was getting ready for the regatta, and was full of bustle.  We met 
a goodish number of men we knew about the town, and in their pleasant 
company the time slipped by somewhat quickly; so that it was nearly 
eleven o'clock before we set off on our four-mile walk home - as we had 
learned to call our little craft by this time.

It was a dismal night, coldish, with a thin rain falling; and as we 
trudged through the dark, silent fields, talking low to each other, and 
wondering if we were going right or not, we thought of the cosy boat, 
with the bright light streaming through the tight-drawn canvas; of Harris 
and Montmorency, and the whisky, and wished that we were there.

We conjured up the picture of ourselves inside, tired and a little 
hungry; of the gloomy river and the shapeless trees; and, like a giant 
glow-worm underneath them, our dear old boat, so snug and warm and 
cheerful.  We could see ourselves at supper there, pecking away at cold 
meat, and passing each other chunks of bread; we could hear the cheery 
clatter of our knives, the laughing voices, filling all the space, and 
overflowing through the opening out into the night.  And we hurried on to 
realise the vision.

We struck the tow-path at length, and that made us happy; because prior 
to this we had not been sure whether we were walking towards the river or 
away from it, and when you are tired and want to go to bed uncertainties 
like that worry you.  We passed Skiplake as the clock was striking the 
quarter to twelve; and then George said, thoughtfully:

"You don't happen to remember which of the islands it was, do you?"

"No," I replied, beginning to grow thoughtful too, "I don't.  How many 
are there?"

"Only four," answered George.  "It will be all right, if he's awake."

"And if not?" I queried; but we dismissed that train of thought.

We shouted when we came opposite the first island, but there was no 
response; so we went to the second, and tried there, and obtained the 
same result.

"Oh!  I remember now," said George; "it was the third one."

And we ran on hopefully to the third one, and hallooed.

No answer!

The case was becoming serious. it was now past midnight.  The hotels at 
Skiplake and Henley would be crammed; and we could not go round, knocking 
up cottagers and householders in the middle of the night, to know if they 
let apartments!  George suggested walking back to Henley and assaulting a 
policeman, and so getting a night's lodging in the station-house.  But 
then there was the thought, "Suppose he only hits us back and refuses to 
lock us up!"

We could not pass the whole night fighting policemen.  Besides, we did 
not want to overdo the thing and get six months.

We despairingly tried what seemed in the darkness to be the fourth 
island, but met with no better success.  The rain was coming down fast 
now, and evidently meant to last.  We were wet to the skin, and cold and 
miserable.  We began to wonder whether there were only four islands or 
more, or whether we were near the islands at all, or whether we were 
anywhere within a mile of where we ought to be, or in the wrong part of 
the river altogether; everything looked so strange and different in the 
darkness.  We began to understand the sufferings of the Babes in the 
Wood.

Just when we had given up all hope - yes, I know that is always the time 
that things do happen in novels and tales; but I can't help it.  I 
resolved, when I began to write this book, that I would be strictly 
truthful in all things; and so I will be, even if I have to employ 
hackneyed phrases for the purpose.

It WAS just when we had given up all hope, and I must therefore say so.  
Just when we had given up all hope, then, I suddenly caught sight, a 
little way below us, of a strange, weird sort of glimmer flickering among 
the trees on the opposite bank.  For an instant I thought of ghosts: it 
was such a shadowy, mysterious light.  The next moment it flashed across 
me that it was our boat, and I sent up such a yell across the water that 
made the night seem to shake in its bed.

We waited breathless for a minute, and then - oh! divinest music of the 
darkness! - we heard the answering bark of Montmorency.  We shouted back 
loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers - I never could understand myself 
why it should take more noise to wake seven sleepers than one - and, 
after what seemed an hour, but what was really, I suppose, about five 
minutes, we saw the lighted boat creeping slowly over the blackness, and 
heard Harris's sleepy voice asking where we were.

There was an unaccountable strangeness about Harris.  It was something 
more than mere ordinary tiredness.  He pulled the boat against a part of 
the bank from which it was quite impossible for us to get into it, and 
immediately went to sleep.  It took us an immense amount of screaming and 
roaring to wake him up again and put some sense into him; but we 
succeeded at last, and got safely on board.

Harris had a sad expression on him, so we noticed, when we got into the 
boat.  He gave you the idea of a man who had been through trouble.  We 
asked him if anything had happened, and he said-

"Swans!"

It seemed we had moored close to a swan's nest, and, soon after George 
and I had gone, the female swan came back, and kicked up a row about it.  
Harris had chivied her off, and she had gone away, and fetched up her old 
man.  Harris said he had had quite a fight with these two swans; but 
courage and skill had prevailed in the end, and he had defeated them.

Half-an-hour afterwards they returned with eighteen other swans!  It must 
have been a fearful battle, so far as we could understand Harris's 
account of it.  The swans had tried to drag him and Montmorency out of 
the boat and drown them; and he had defended himself like a hero for four 
hours, and had killed the lot, and they had all paddled away to die.

"How many swans did you say there were?" asked George.

"Thirty-two," replied Harris, sleepily.

"You said eighteen just now," said George.

"No, I didn't," grunted Harris; "I said twelve.  Think I can't count?"

What were the real facts about these swans we never found out.  We 
questioned Harris on the subject in the morning, and he said, "What 
swans?" and seemed to think that George and I had been dreaming.

Oh, how delightful it was to be safe in the boat, after our trials and 
fears!  We ate a hearty supper, George and I, and we should have had some 
toddy after it, if we could have found the whisky, but we could not.  We 
examined Harris as to what he had done with it; but he did not seem to 
know what we meant by "whisky," or what we were talking about at all.  
Montmorency looked as if he knew something, but said nothing.

I slept well that night, and should have slept better if it had not been 
for Harris.  I have a vague recollection of having been woke up at least 
a dozen times during the night by Harris wandering about the boat with 
the lantern, looking for his clothes.  He seemed to be worrying about his 
clothes all night.

Twice he routed up George and myself to see if we were lying on his 
trousers.  George got quite wild the second time.

"What the thunder do you want your trousers for, in the middle of the 
night?" he asked indignantly.  "Why don't you lie down, and go to sleep?"

I found him in trouble, the next time I awoke, because he could not find 
his socks; and my last hazy remembrance is of being rolled over on my 
side, and of hearing Harris muttering something about its being an 
extraordinary thing where his umbrella could have got to.




CHAPTER XV.


HOUSEHOLD DUTIES. - LOVE OF WORK. - THE OLD RIVER HAND, WHAT HE DOES AND 
WHAT HE TELLS YOU HE HAS DONE. - SCEPTICISM OF THE NEW GENERATION. - 
EARLY BOATING RECOLLECTIONS. - RAFTING. - GEORGE DOES THE THING IN STYLE. 
- THE OLD BOATMAN, HIS METHOD. - SO CALM, SO FULL OF PEACE. - THE 
BEGINNER. - PUNTING. - A SAD ACCIDENT. - PLEASURES OF FRIENDSHIP. - 
SAILING, MY FIRST EXPERIENCE. - POSSIBLE REASON WHY WE WERE NOT DROWNED.

WE woke late the next morning, and, at Harris's earnest desire, partook 
of a plain breakfast, with "non dainties."  Then we cleaned up, and put 
everything straight (a continual labour, which was beginning to afford me 
a pretty clear insight into a question that had often posed me - namely, 
how a woman with the work of only one house on her hands manages to pass 
away her time), and, at about ten, set out on what we had determined 
should be a good day's journey.

We agreed that we would pull this morning, as a change from towing; and 
Harris thought the best arrangement would be that George and I should 
scull, and he steer.  I did not chime in with this idea at all; I said I 
thought Harris would have been showing a more proper spirit if he had 
suggested that he and George should work, and let me rest a bit.  It 
seemed to me that I was doing more than my fair share of the work on this 
trip, and I was beginning to feel strongly on the subject.

It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do.  It 
is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates 
me.  I can sit and look at it for hours.  I love to keep it by me: the 
idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.

You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a 
passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an 
inch of room for any more.  I shall have to throw out a wing soon.

And I am careful of my work, too.  Why, some of the work that I have by 
me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn't a 
finger-mark on it.  I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now 
and then and dust it.  No man keeps his work in a better state of 
preservation than I do.

But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair.  I do not ask for 
more than my proper share.

But I get it without asking for it - at least, so it appears to me - and 
this worries me.

George says he does not think I need trouble myself on the subject.  He 
thinks it is only my over-scrupulous nature that makes me fear I am 
having more than my due; and that, as a matter of fact, I don't have half 
as much as I ought.  But I expect he only says this to comfort me.

In a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea of each member 
of the crew that he is doing everything.  Harris's notion was, that it 
was he alone who had been working, and that both George and I had been 
imposing upon him.  George, on the other hand, ridiculed the idea of 
Harris's having done anything more than eat and sleep, and had a cast-
iron opinion that it was he - George himself - who had done all the 
labour worth speaking of.

He said he had never been out with such a couple of lazily skulks as 
Harris and I.

That amused Harris.

"Fancy old George talking about work!" he laughed; "why, about half-an-
hour of it would kill him.  Have you ever seen George work?" he added, 
turning to me.

I agreed with Harris that I never had - most certainly not since we had 
started on this trip.

"Well, I don't see how YOU can know much about it, one way or the other," 
George retorted on Harris; "for I'm blest if you haven't been asleep half 
the time.  Have you ever seen Harris fully awake, except at meal-time?" 
asked George, addressing me.

Truth compelled me to support George.  Harris had been very little good 
in the boat, so far as helping was concerned, from the beginning.

"Well, hang it all, I've done more than old J., anyhow," rejoined Harris.

"Well, you couldn't very well have done less," added George.

"I suppose J. thinks he is the passenger," continued Harris.

And that was their gratitude to me for having brought them and their 
wretched old boat all the way up from Kingston, and for having 
superintended and managed everything for them, and taken care of them, 
and slaved for them.  It is the way of the world.

We settled the present difficulty by arranging that Harris and George 
should scull up past Reading, and that I should tow the boat on from 
there.  Pulling a heavy boat against a strong stream has few attractions 
for me now.  There was a time, long ago, when I used to clamour for the 
hard work: now I like to give the youngsters a chance.

I notice that most of the old river hands are similarly retiring, 
whenever there is any stiff pulling to be done.  You can always tell the 
old river hand by the way in which he stretches himself out upon the 
cushions at the bottom of the boat, and encourages the rowers by telling 
them anecdotes about the marvellous feats he performed last season.

"Call what you're doing hard work!" he drawls, between his contented 
whiffs, addressing the two perspiring novices, who have been grinding 
away steadily up stream for the last hour and a half; "why, Jim Biffles 
and Jack and I, last season, pulled up from Marlow to Goring in one 
afternoon - never stopped once.  Do you remember that, Jack?"

Jack, who has made himself a bed up in the prow of all the rugs and coats 
he can collect, and who has been lying there asleep for the last two 
hours, partially wakes up on being thus appealed to, and recollects all 
about the matter, and also remembers that there was an unusually strong 
stream against them all the way - likewise a stiff wind.

"About thirty-four miles, I suppose, it must have been," adds the first 
speaker, reaching down another cushion to put under his head.

" No - no; don't exaggerate, Tom," murmurs Jack, reprovingly; "thirty-
three at the outside."

And Jack and Tom, quite exhausted by this conversational effort, drop off 
to sleep once more.  And the two simple-minded youngsters at the sculls 
feel quite proud of being allowed to row such wonderful oarsmen as Jack 
and Tom, and strain away harder than ever.

When I was a young man, I used to listen to these tales from my elders, 
and take them in, and swallow them, and digest every word of them, and 
then come up for more; but the new generation do not seem to have the 
simple faith of the old times.  We - George, Harris, and myself - took a 
"raw'un" up with us once last season, and we plied him with the customary 
stretchers about the wonderful things we had done all the way up.

We gave him all the regular ones - the time-honoured lies that have done 
duty up the river with every boating-man for years past - and added seven 
entirely original ones that we had invented for ourselves, including a 
really quite likely story, founded, to a certain extent, on an all but 
true episode, which had actually happened in a modified degree some years 
ago to friends of ours - a story that a mere child could have believed 
without injuring itself, much.

And that young man mocked at them all, and wanted us to repeat the feats 
then and there, and to bet us ten to one that we didn't.

We got to chatting about our rowing experiences this morning, and to 
recounting stories of our first efforts in the art of oarsmanship.  My 
own earliest boating recollection is of five of us contributing 
threepence each and taking out a curiously constructed craft on the 
Regent's Park lake, drying ourselves subsequently, in the park-keeper's 
lodge.

After that, having acquired a taste for the water, I did a good deal of 
rafting in various suburban brickfields - an exercise providing more 
interest and excitement than might be imagined, especially when you are 
in the middle of the pond and the proprietor of the materials of which 
the raft is constructed suddenly appears on the bank, with a big stick in 
his hand.

Your first sensation on seeing this gentleman is that, somehow or other, 
you don't feel equal to company and conversation, and that, if you could 
do so without appearing rude, you would rather avoid meeting him; and 
your object is, therefore, to get off on the opposite side of the pond to 
which he is, and to go home quietly and quickly, pretending not to see 
him.  He, on the contrary is yearning to take you by the hand, and talk 
to you.

It appears that he knows your father, and is intimately acquainted with 
yourself, but this does not draw you towards him.  He says he'll teach 
you to take his boards and make a raft of them; but, seeing that you know 
how to do this pretty well already, the offer, though doubtless kindly 
meant, seems a superfluous one on his part, and you are reluctant to put 
him to any trouble by accepting it.

His anxiety to meet you, however, is proof against all your coolness, and 
the energetic manner in which he dodges up and down the pond so as to be 
on the spot to greet you when you land is really quite flattering.

If he be of a stout and short-winded build, you can easily avoid his 
advances; but, when he is of the youthful and long-legged type, a meeting 
is inevitable.  The interview is, however, extremely brief, most of the 
conversation being on his part, your remarks being mostly of an 
exclamatory and mono-syllabic order, and as soon as you can tear yourself 
away you do so.

I devoted some three months to rafting, and, being then as proficient as 
there was any need to be at that branch of the art, I determined to go in 
for rowing proper, and joined one of the Lea boating clubs.

Being out in a boat on the river Lea, especially on Saturday afternoons, 
soon makes you smart at handling a craft, and spry at escaping being run 
down by roughs or swamped by barges; and it also affords plenty of 
opportunity for acquiring the most prompt and graceful method of lying 
down flat at the bottom of the boat so as to avoid being chucked out into 
the river by passing tow-lines.

But it does not give you style.  It was not till I came to the Thames 
that I got style.  My style of rowing is very much admired now.  People 
say it is so quaint.

George never went near the water until he was sixteen.  Then he and eight 
other gentlemen of about the same age went down in a body to Kew one 
Saturday, with the idea of hiring a boat there, and pulling to Richmond 
and back; one of their number, a shock-headed youth, named Joskins, who 
had once or twice taken out a boat on the Serpentine, told them it was 
jolly fun, boating!

The tide was running out pretty rapidly when they reached the landing-
stage, and there was a stiff breeze blowing across the river, but this 
did not trouble them at all, and they proceeded to select their boat.

There was an eight-oared racing outrigger drawn up on the stage; that was 
the one that took their fancy.  They said they'd have that one, please.  
The boatman was away, and only his boy was in charge.  The boy tried to 
damp their ardour for the outrigger, and showed them two or three very 
comfortable-looking boats of the family-party build, but those would not 
do at all; the outrigger was the boat they thought they would look best 
in.

So the boy launched it, and they took off their coats and prepared to 
take their seats.  The boy suggested that George, who, even in those 
days, was always the heavy man of any party, should be number four.  
George said he should be happy to be number four, and promptly stepped 
into bow's place, and sat down with his back to the stern.  They got him 
into his proper position at last, and then the others followed.

A particularly nervous boy was appointed cox, and the steering principle 
explained to him by Joskins.  Joskins himself took stroke.  He told the 
others that it was simple enough; all they had to do was to follow him.

They said they were ready, and the boy on the landing stage took a boat-
hook and shoved him off.

What then followed George is unable to describe in detail.  He has a 
confused recollection of having, immediately on starting, received a 
violent blow in the small of the back from the butt-end of number five's 
scull, at the same time that his own seat seemed to disappear from under 
him by magic, and leave him sitting on the boards.  He also noticed, as a 
curious circumstance, that number two was at the same instant lying on 
his back at the bottom of the boat, with his legs in the air, apparently 
in a fit.

They passed under Kew Bridge, broadside, at the rate of eight miles an 
hour. Joskins being the only one who was rowing.  George, on recovering 
his seat, tried to help him, but, on dipping his oar into the water, it 
immediately, to his intense surprise, disappeared under the boat, and 
nearly took him with it.

And then "cox" threw both rudder lines over-board, and burst into tears.

How they got back George never knew, but it took them just forty minutes.  
A dense crowd watched the entertainment from Kew Bridge with much 
interest, and everybody shouted out to them different directions.  Three 
times they managed to get the boat back through the arch, and three times 
they were carried under it again, and every time "cox" looked up and saw 
the bridge above him he broke out into renewed sobs.

George said he little thought that afternoon that he should ever come to 
really like boating.

Harris is more accustomed to sea rowing than to river work, and says 
that, as an exercise, he prefers it.  I don't.  I remember taking a small 
boat out at Eastbourne last summer: I used to do a good deal of sea 
rowing years ago, and I thought I should be all right; but I found I had 
forgotten the art entirely.  When one scull was deep down underneath the 
water, the other would be flourishing wildly about in the air.  To get a 
grip of the water with both at the same time I had to stand up.  The 
parade was crowded with nobility and gentry, and I had to pull past them 
in this ridiculous fashion.  I landed half-way down the beach, and 
secured the services of an old boatman to take me back.

I like to watch an old boatman rowing, especially one who has been hired 
by the hour.  There is something so beautifully calm and restful about 
his method.  It is so free from that fretful haste, that vehement 
striving, that is every day becoming more and more the bane of 
nineteenth-century life.  He is not for ever straining himself to pass 
all the other boats.  If another boat overtakes him and passes him it 
does not annoy him; as a matter of fact, they all do overtake him and 
pass him - all those that are going his way.  This would trouble and 
irritate some people; the sublime equanimity of the hired boatman under 
the ordeal affords us a beautiful lesson against ambition and uppishness.

Plain practical rowing of the get-the-boat-along order is not a very 
difficult art to acquire, but it takes a good deal of practice before a 
man feels comfortable, when rowing past girls.  It is the "time" that 
worries a youngster.  "It's jolly funny," he says, as for the twentieth 
time within five minutes he disentangles his sculls from yours; "I can 
get on all right when I'm by myself!"

To see two novices try to keep time with one another is very amusing.  
Bow finds it impossible to keep pace with stroke, because stroke rows in 
such an extraordinary fashion.  Stroke is intensely indignant at this, 
and explains that what he has been endeavouring to do for the last ten 
minutes is to adapt his method to bow's limited capacity.  Bow, in turn, 
then becomes insulted, and requests stroke not to trouble his head about 
him (bow), but to devote his mind to setting a sensible stroke.

"Or, shall I take stroke?" he adds, with the evident idea that that would 
at once put the whole matter right.

They splash along for another hundred yards with still moderate success, 
and then the whole secret of their trouble bursts upon stroke like a 
flash of inspiration.

"I tell you what it is: you've got my sculls," he cries, turning to bow; 
"pass yours over."

"Well, do you know, I've been wondering how it was I couldn't get on with 
these," answers bow, quite brightening up, and most willingly assisting 
in the exchange.  "NOW we shall be all right."

But they are not - not even then.  Stroke has to stretch his arms nearly 
out of their sockets to reach his sculls now; while bow's pair, at each 
recovery, hit him a violent blow in the chest.  So they change back 
again, and come to the conclusion that the man has given them the wrong 
set altogether; and over their mutual abuse of this man they become quite 
friendly and sympathetic.

George said he had often longed to take to punting for a change.  Punting 
is not as easy as it looks.  As in rowing, you soon learn how to get 
along and handle the craft, but it takes long practice before you can do 
this with dignity and without getting the water all up your sleeve.

One young man I knew had a very sad accident happen to him the first time 
he went punting.  He had been getting on so well that he had grown quite 
cheeky over the business, and was walking up and down the punt, working 
his pole with a careless grace that was quite fascinating to watch.  Up 
he would march to the head of the punt, plant his pole, and then run 
along right to the other end, just like an old punter.  Oh! it was grand.

And it would all have gone on being grand if he had not unfortunately, 
while looking round to enjoy the scenery, taken just one step more than 
there was any necessity for, and walked off the punt altogether.  The 
pole was firmly fixed in the mud, and he was left clinging to it while 
the punt drifted away.  It was an undignified position for him.  A rude 
boy on the bank immediately yelled out to a lagging chum to "hurry up and 
see real monkey on a stick."

I could not go to his assistance, because, as ill-luck would have it, we 
had not taken the proper precaution to bring out a spare pole with us.  I 
could only sit and look at him.  His expression as the pole slowly sank 
with him I shall never forget; there was so much thought in it.

I watched him gently let down into the water, and saw him scramble out, 
sad and wet.  I could not help laughing, he looked such a ridiculous 
figure.  I continued to chuckle to myself about it for some time, and 
then it was suddenly forced in upon me that really I had got very little 
to laugh at when I came to think of it.  Here was I, alone in a punt, 
without a pole, drifting helplessly down mid-stream - possibly towards a 
weir.

I began to feel very indignant with my friend for having stepped 
overboard and gone off in that way.  He might, at all events, have left 
me the pole.

I drifted on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I came in sight of a 
fishing-punt moored in mid-stream, in which sat two old fishermen.  They 
saw me bearing down upon them, and they called out to me to keep out of 
their way.

"I can't," I shouted back.

"But you don't try," they answered.

I explained the matter to them when I got nearer, and they caught me and 
lent me a pole.  The weir was just fifty yards below.  I am glad they 
happened to be there.

The first time I went punting was in company with three other fellows; 
they were going to show me how to do it.  We could not all start 
together, so I said I would go down first and get out the punt, and then 
I could potter about and practice a bit until they came.

I could not get a punt out that afternoon, they were all engaged; so I 
had nothing else to do but to sit down on the bank, watching the river, 
and waiting for my friends.

I had not been sitting there long before my attention became attracted to 
a man in a punt who, I noticed with some surprise, wore a jacket and cap 
exactly like mine.  He was evidently a novice at punting, and his 
performance was most interesting.  You never knew what was going to 
happen when he put the pole in; he evidently did not know himself.  
Sometimes he shot up stream and sometimes he shot down stream, and at 
other times he simply spun round and came up the other side of the pole.  
And with every result he seemed equally surprised and annoyed.

The people about the river began to get quite absorbed in him after a 
while, and to make bets with one another as to what would be the outcome 
of his next push.

In the course of time my friends arrived on the opposite bank, and they 
stopped and watched him too.  His back was towards them, and they only 
saw his jacket and cap.  From this they immediately jumped to the 
conclusion that it was I, their beloved companion, who was making an 
exhibition of himself, and their delight knew no bounds.  They commenced 
to chaff him unmercifully.

I did not grasp their mistake at first, and I thought, "How rude of them 
to go on like that, with a perfect stranger, too!"  But before I could 
call out and reprove them, the explanation of the matter occurred to me, 
and I withdrew behind a tree.

Oh, how they enjoyed themselves, ridiculing that young man!  For five 
good minutes they stood there, shouting ribaldry at him, deriding him, 
mocking him, jeering at him.  They peppered him with stale jokes, they 
even made a few new ones and threw at him.  They hurled at him all the 
private family jokes belonging to our set, and which must have been 
perfectly unintelligible to him.  And then, unable to stand their brutal 
jibes any longer, he turned round on them, and they saw his face!

I was glad to notice that they had sufficient decency left in them to 
look very foolish.  They explained to him that they had thought he was 
some one they knew.  They said they hoped he would not deem them capable 
of so insulting any one except a personal friend of their own.

Of course their having mistaken him for a friend excused it.  I remember 
Harris telling me once of a bathing experience he had at Boulogne.  He 
was swimming about there near the beach, when he felt himself suddenly 
seized by the neck from behind, and forcibly plunged under water.  He 
struggled violently, but whoever had got hold of him seemed to be a 
perfect Hercules in strength, and all his efforts to escape were 
unavailing.  He had given up kicking, and was trying to turn his thoughts 
upon solemn things, when his captor released him.

He regained his feet, and looked round for his would-be murderer.  The 
assassin was standing close by him, laughing heartily, but the moment he 
caught sight of Harris's face, as it emerged from the water, he started 
back and seemed quite concerned.

"I really beg your pardon," he stammered confusedly, "but I took you for 
a friend of mine!"

Harris thought it was lucky for him the man had not mistaken him for a 
relation, or he would probably have been drowned outright.

Sailing is a thing that wants knowledge and practice too - though, as a 
boy, I did not think so.  I had an idea it came natural to a body, like 
rounders and touch.  I knew another boy who held this view likewise, and 
so, one windy day, we thought we would try the sport.  We were stopping 
down at Yarmouth, and we decided we would go for a trip up the Yare.  We 
hired a sailing boat at the yard by the bridge, and started off.  "It's 
rather a rough day," said the man to us, as we put off: "better take in a 
reef and luff sharp when you get round the bend."

We said we would make a point of it, and left him with a cheery "Good-
morning," wondering to ourselves how you "luffed," and where we were to 
get a "reef" from, and what we were to do with it when we had got it.

We rowed until we were out of sight of the town, and then, with a wide 
stretch of water in front of us, and the wind blowing a perfect hurricane 
across it, we felt that the time had come to commence operations.

Hector - I think that was his name - went on pulling while I unrolled the 
sail.  It seemed a complicated job, but I accomplished it at length, and 
then came the question, which was the top end?

By a sort of natural instinct, we, of course, eventually decided that the 
bottom was the top, and set to work to fix it upside-down.  But it was a 
long time before we could get it up, either that way or any other way.  
The impression on the mind of the sail seemed to be that we were playing 
at funerals, and that I was the corpse and itself was the winding-sheet.

When it found that this was not the idea, it hit me over the head with 
the boom, and refused to do anything.

"Wet it," said Hector; "drop it over and get it wet."

He said people in ships always wetted the sails before they put them up.  
So I wetted it; but that only made matters worse than they were before.  
A dry sail clinging to your legs and wrapping itself round your head is 
not pleasant, but, when the sail is sopping wet, it becomes quite vexing.

We did get the thing up at last, the two of us together.  We fixed it, 
not exactly upside down - more sideways like - and we tied it up to the 
mast with the painter, which we cut off for the purpose.

That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact.  Why it did not 
upset I am unable to offer any reason.  I have often thought about the 
matter since, but I have never succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory 
explanation of the phenomenon.

Possibly the result may have been brought about by the natural obstinacy 
of all things in this world.  The boat may possibly have come to the 
conclusion, judging from a cursory view of our behaviour, that we had 
come out for a morning's suicide, and had thereupon determined to 
disappoint us.  That is the only suggestion I can offer.

By clinging like grim death to the gunwale, we just managed to keep 
inside the boat, but it was exhausting work.  Hector said that pirates 
and other seafaring people generally lashed the rudder to something or 
other, and hauled in the main top-jib, during severe squalls, and thought 
we ought to try to do something of the kind; but I was for letting her 
have her head to the wind.

As my advice was by far the easiest to follow, we ended by adopting it, 
and contrived to embrace the gunwale and give her her head.

The boat travelled up stream for about a mile at a pace I have never 
sailed at since, and don't want to again.  Then, at a bend, she heeled 
over till half her sail was under water.  Then she righted herself by a 
miracle and flew for a long low bank of soft mud.

That mud-bank saved us.  The boat ploughed its way into the middle of it 
and then stuck.  Finding that we were once more able to move according to 
our ideas, instead of being pitched and thrown about like peas in a 
bladder, we crept forward, and cut down the sail.

We had had enough sailing.  We did not want to overdo the thing and get a 
surfeit of it.  We had had a sail - a good all-round exciting, 
interesting sail - and now we thought we would have a row, just for a 
change like.

We took the sculls and tried to push the boat off the mud, and, in doing 
so, we broke one of the sculls.  After that we proceeded with great 
caution, but they were a wretched old pair, and the second one cracked 
almost easier than the first, and left us helpless.

The mud stretched out for about a hundred yards in front of us, and 
behind us was the water.  The only thing to be done was to sit and wait 
until someone came by.

It was not the sort of day to attract people out on the river, and it was 
three hours before a soul came in sight.  It was an old fisherman who, 
with immense difficulty, at last rescued us, and we were towed back in an 
ignominious fashion to the boat-yard.

What between tipping the man who had brought us home, and paying for the 
broken sculls, and for having been out four hours and a half, it cost us 
a pretty considerable number of weeks' pocket-money, that sail.  But we 
learned experience, and they say that is always cheap at any price.




CHAPTER XVI.


READING. - WE ARE TOWED BY STEAM LAUNCH. - IRRITATING BEHAVIOUR OF SMALL 
BOATS. - HOW THEY GET IN THE WAY OF STEAM LAUNCHES. - GEORGE AND HARRIS 
AGAIN SHIRK THEIR WORK. - RATHER A HACKNEYED STORY. - STREATLEY AND 
GORING.

WE came in sight of Reading about eleven.  The river is dirty and dismal 
here.  One does not linger in the neighbourhood of Reading.  The town 
itself is a famous old place, dating from the dim days of King Ethelred, 
when the Danes anchored their warships in the Kennet, and started from 
Reading to ravage all the land of Wessex; and here Ethelred and his 
brother Alfred fought and defeated them, Ethelred doing the praying and 
Alfred the fighting.

In later years, Reading seems to have been regarded as a handy place to 
run down to, when matters were becoming unpleasant in London.  Parliament 
generally rushed off to Reading whenever there was a plague on at 
Westminster; and, in 1625, the Law followed suit, and all the courts were 
held at Reading.  It must have been worth while having a mere ordinary 
plague now and then in London to get rid of both the lawyers and the 
Parliament.

During the Parliamentary struggle, Reading was besieged by the Earl of 
Essex, and, a quarter of a century later, the Prince of Orange routed 
King James's troops there.

Henry I. lies buried at Reading, in the Benedictine abbey founded by him 
there, the ruins of which may still be seen; and, in this same abbey, 
great John of Gaunt was married to the Lady Blanche.

At Reading lock we came up with a steam launch, belonging to some friends 
of mine, and they towed us up to within about a mile of Streatley.  It is 
very delightful being towed up by a launch.  I prefer it myself to 
rowing.  The run would have been more delightful still, if it had not 
been for a lot of wretched small boats that were continually getting in 
the way of our launch, and, to avoid running down which, we had to be 
continually easing and stopping.  It is really most annoying, the manner 
in which these rowing boats get in the way of one's launch up the river; 
something ought to done to stop it.

And they are so confoundedly impertinent, too, over it.  You can whistle 
till you nearly burst your boiler before they will trouble themselves to 
hurry.  I would have one or two of them run down now and then, if I had 
my way, just to teach them all a lesson.

The river becomes very lovely from a little above Reading.  The railway 
rather spoils it near Tilehurst, but from Mapledurham up to Streatley it 
is glorious.  A little above Mapledurham lock you pass Hardwick House, 
where Charles I. played bowls.  The neighbourhood of Pangbourne, where 
the quaint little Swan Inn stands, must be as familiar to the HABITUES of 
the Art Exhibitions as it is to its own inhabitants.

My friends' launch cast us loose just below the grotto, and then Harris 
wanted to make out that it was my turn to pull.  This seemed to me most 
unreasonable.  It had been arranged in the morning that I should bring 
the boat up to three miles above Reading.  Well, here we were, ten miles 
above Reading!  Surely it was now their turn again.

I could not get either George or Harris to see the matter in its proper 
light, however; so, to save argument, I took the sculls.  I had not been 
pulling for more than a minute or so, when George noticed something black 
floating on the water, and we drew up to it.  George leant over, as we 
neared it, and laid hold of it.  And then he drew back with a cry, and a 
blanched face.

It was the dead body of a woman.  It lay very lightly on the water, and 
the face was sweet and calm.  It was not a beautiful face; it was too 
prematurely aged-looking, too thin and drawn, to be that; but it was a 
gentle, lovable face, in spite of its stamp of pinch and poverty, and 
upon it was that look of restful peace that comes to the faces of the 
sick sometimes when at last the pain has left them.

Fortunately for us - we having no desire to be kept hanging about 
coroners' courts - some men on the bank had seen the body too, and now 
took charge of it from us.

We found out the woman's story afterwards.  Of course it was the old, old 
vulgar tragedy.  She had loved and been deceived - or had deceived 
herself.  Anyhow, she had sinned - some of us do now and then - and her 
family and friends, naturally shocked and indignant, had closed their 
doors against her.

Left to fight the world alone, with the millstone of her shame around her 
neck, she had sunk ever lower and lower.  For a while she had kept both 
herself and the child on the twelve shillings a week that twelve hours' 
drudgery a day procured her, paying six shillings out of it for the 
child, and keeping her own body and soul together on the remainder.

Six shillings a week does not keep body and soul together very unitedly.  
They want to get away from each other when there is only such a very 
slight bond as that between them; and one day, I suppose, the pain and 
the dull monotony of it all had stood before her eyes plainer than usual, 
and the mocking spectre had frightened her.  She had made one last appeal 
to friends, but, against the chill wall of their respectability, the 
voice of the erring outcast fell unheeded; and then she had gone to see 
her child - had held it in her arms and kissed it, in a weary, dull sort 
of way, and without betraying any particular emotion of any kind, and had 
left it, after putting into its hand a penny box of chocolate she had 
bought it, and afterwards, with her last few shillings, had taken a 
ticket and come down to Goring.

It seemed that the bitterest thoughts of her life must have centred about 
the wooded reaches and the bright green meadows around Goring; but women 
strangely hug the knife that stabs them, and, perhaps, amidst the gall, 
there may have mingled also sunny memories of sweetest hours, spent upon 
those shadowed deeps over which the great trees bend their branches down 
so low.

She had wandered about the woods by the river's brink all day, and then, 
when evening fell and the grey twilight spread its dusky robe upon the 
waters, she stretched her arms out to the silent river that had known her 
sorrow and her joy.  And the old river had taken her into its gentle 
arms, and had laid her weary head upon its bosom, and had hushed away the 
pain.

Thus had she sinned in all things - sinned in living and in dying.  God 
help her! and all other sinners, if any more there be.

Goring on the left bank and Streatley on the right are both or either 
charming places to stay at for a few days.  The reaches down to 
Pangbourne woo one for a sunny sail or for a moonlight row, and the 
country round about is full of beauty.  We had intended to push on to 
Wallingford that day, but the sweet smiling face of the river here lured 
us to linger for a while; and so we left our boat at the bridge, and went 
up into Streatley, and lunched at the "Bull," much to Montmorency's 
satisfaction.

They say that the hills on each ride of the stream here once joined and 
formed a barrier across what is now the Thames, and that then the river 
ended there above Goring in one vast lake.  I am not in a position either 
to contradict or affirm this statement.  I simply offer it.

It is an ancient place, Streatley, dating back, like most river-side 
towns and villages, to British and Saxon times.  Goring is not nearly so 
pretty a little spot to stop at as Streatley, if you have your choice; 
but it is passing fair enough in its way, and is nearer the railway in 
case you want to slip off without paying your hotel bill.




CHAPTER XVII.


WASHING DAY. - FISH AND FISHERS. - ON THE ART OF ANGLING. - A 
CONSCIENTIOUS FLY-FISHER. - A FISHY STORY.

WE stayed two days at Streatley, and got our clothes washed.  We had 
tried washing them ourselves, in the river, under George's 
superintendence, and it had been a failure.  Indeed, it had been more 
than a failure, because we were worse off after we had washed our clothes 
than we were before.  Before we had washed them, they had been very, very 
dirty, it is true; but they were just wearable.  AFTER we had washed them 
- well, the river between Reading and Henley was much cleaner, after we 
had washed our clothes in it, than it was before.  All the dirt contained 
in the river between Reading and Henley, we collected, during that wash, 
and worked it into our clothes.

The washerwoman at Streatley said she felt she owed it to herself to 
charge us just three times the usual prices for that wash.  She said it 
had not been like washing, it had been more in the nature of excavating.

We paid the bill without a murmur.

The neighbourhood of Streatley and Goring is a great fishing centre.  
There is some excellent fishing to be had here.  The river abounds in 
pike, roach, dace, gudgeon, and eels, just here; and you can sit and fish 
for them all day.

Some people do.  They never catch them.  I never knew anybody catch 
anything, up the Thames, except minnows and dead cats, but that has 
nothing to do, of course, with fishing!  The local fisherman's guide 
doesn't say a word about catching anything.  All it says is the place is 
"a good station for fishing;" and, from what I have seen of the district, 
I am quite prepared to bear out this statement.

There is no spot in the world where you can get more fishing, or where 
you can fish for a longer period.  Some fishermen come here and fish for 
a day, and others stop and fish for a month.  You can hang on and fish 
for a year, if you want to: it will be all the same.

The ANGLER'S GUIDE TO THE THAMES says that "jack and perch are also to be 
had about here," but there the ANGLER'S GUIDE is wrong.  Jack and perch 
may BE about there.  Indeed, I know for a fact that they are.  You can 
SEE them there in shoals, when you are out for a walk along the banks: 
they come and stand half out of the water with their mouths open for 
biscuits.  And, if you go for a bathe, they crowd round, and get in your 
way, and irritate you.  But they are not to be "had" by a bit of worm on 
the end of a hook, nor anything like it - not they!

I am not a good fisherman myself.  I devoted a considerable amount of 
attention to the subject at one time, and was getting on, as I thought, 
fairly well; but the old hands told me that I should never be any real 
good at it, and advised me to give it up.  They said that I was an 
extremely neat thrower, and that I seemed to have plenty of gumption for 
the thing, and quite enough constitutional laziness.  But they were sure 
I should never make anything of a fisherman.  I had not got sufficient 
imagination.

They said that as a poet, or a shilling shocker, or a reporter, or 
anything of that kind, I might be satisfactory, but that, to gain any 
position as a Thames angler, would require more play of fancy, more power 
of invention than I appeared to possess.

Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a 
good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; 
but this is a mistake.  Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest 
tyro can manage that.  It is in the circumstantial detail, the 
embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - 
almost of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.

Anybody can come in and say, "Oh, I caught fifteen dozen perch yesterday 
evening;" or "Last Monday I landed a gudgeon, weighing eighteen pounds, 
and measuring three feet from the tip to the tail."

There is no art, no skill, required for that sort of thing.  It shows 
pluck, but that is all.

No; your accomplished angler would scorn to tell a lie, that way.  His 
method is a study in itself.

He comes in quietly with his hat on, appropriates the most comfortable 
chair, lights his pipe, and commences to puff in silence.  He lets the 
youngsters brag away for a while, and then, during a momentary lull, he 
removes the pipe from his mouth, and remarks, as he knocks the ashes out 
against the bars:

"Well, I had a haul on Tuesday evening that it's not much good my telling 
anybody about."

"Oh! why's that?" they ask.

"Because I don't expect anybody would believe me if I did," replies the 
old fellow calmly, and without even a tinge of bitterness in his tone, as 
he refills his pipe, and requests the landlord to bring him three of 
Scotch, cold.

There is a pause after this, nobody feeling sufficiently sure of himself 
to contradict the old gentleman.  So he has to go on by himself without 
any encouragement.

"No," he continues thoughtfully; "I shouldn't believe it myself if 
anybody told it to me, but it's a fact, for all that.  I had been sitting 
there all the afternoon and had caught literally nothing - except a few 
dozen dace and a score of jack; and I was just about giving it up as a 
bad job when I suddenly felt a rather smart pull at the line.  I thought 
it was another little one, and I went to jerk it up.  Hang me, if I could 
move the rod!  It took me half-an-hour - half-an-hour, sir! - to land 
that fish; and every moment I thought the line was going to snap!  I 
reached him at last, and what do you think it was?  A sturgeon! a forty 
pound sturgeon! taken on a line, sir!  Yes, you may well look surprised - 
I'll have another three of Scotch, landlord, please."

And then he goes on to tell of the astonishment of everybody who saw it; 
and what his wife said, when he got home, and of what Joe Buggles thought 
about it.

I asked the landlord of an inn up the river once, if it did not injure 
him, sometimes, listening to the tales that the fishermen about there 
told him; and he said:

"Oh, no; not now, sir.  It did used to knock me over a bit at first, but, 
lor love you! me and the missus we listens to `em all day now.  It's what 
you're used to, you know.  It's what you're used to."

I knew a young man once, he was a most conscientious fellow, and, when he 
took to fly-fishing, he determined never to exaggerate his hauls by more 
than twenty-five per cent.

"When I have caught forty fish," said he, "then I will tell people that I 
have caught fifty, and so on.  But I will not lie any more than that, 
because it is sinful to lie."

But the twenty-five per cent. plan did not work well at all.  He never 
was able to use it.  The greatest number of fish he ever caught in one 
day was three, and you can't add twenty-five per cent. to three - at 
least, not in fish.

So he increased his percentage to thirty-three-and-a-third; but that, 
again, was awkward, when he had only caught one or two; so, to simplify 
matters, he made up his mind to just double the quantity.

He stuck to this arrangement for a couple of months, and then he grew 
dissatisfied with it.  Nobody believed him when he told them that he only 
doubled, and he, therefore, gained no credit that way whatever, while his 
moderation put him at a disadvantage among the other anglers.  When he 
had really caught three small fish, and said he had caught six, it used 
to make him quite jealous to hear a man, whom he knew for a fact had only 
caught one, going about telling people he had landed two dozen.

So, eventually, he made one final arrangement with himself, which he has 
religiously held to ever since, and that was to count each fish that he 
caught as ten, and to assume ten to begin with.  For example, if he did 
not catch any fish at all, then he said he had caught ten fish - you 
could never catch less than ten fish by his system; that was the 
foundation of it.  Then, if by any chance he really did catch one fish, 
he called it twenty, while two fish would count thirty, three forty, and 
so on.

It is a simple and easily worked plan, and there has been some talk 
lately of its being made use of by the angling fraternity in general.  
Indeed, the Committee of the Thames Angler's Association did recommend 
its adoption about two years ago, but some of the older members opposed 
it.  They said they would consider the idea if the number were doubled, 
and each fish counted as twenty.

If ever you have an evening to spare, up the river, I should advise you 
to drop into one of the little village inns, and take a seat in the tap-
room.  You will be nearly sure to meet one or two old rod-men, sipping 
their toddy there, and they will tell you enough fishy stories, in half 
an hour, to give you indigestion for a month.

George and I - I don't know what had become of Harris; he had gone out 
and had a shave, early in the afternoon, and had then come back and spent 
full forty minutes in pipeclaying his shoes, we had not seen him since - 
George and I, therefore, and the dog, left to ourselves, went for a walk 
to Wallingford on the second evening, and, coming home, we called in at a 
little river-side inn, for a rest, and other things.

We went into the parlour and sat down.  There was an old fellow there, 
smoking a long clay pipe, and we naturally began chatting.

He told us that it had been a fine day to-day, and we told him that it 
had been a fine day yesterday, and then we all told each other that we 
thought it would be a fine day to-morrow; and George said the crops 
seemed to be coming up nicely.

After that it came out, somehow or other, that we were strangers in the 
neighbourhood, and that we were going away the next morning.

Then a pause ensued in the conversation, during which our eyes wandered 
round the room.  They finally rested upon a dusty old glass-case, fixed 
very high up above the chimney-piece, and containing a trout.  It rather 
fascinated me, that trout; it was such a monstrous fish.  In fact, at 
first glance, I thought it was a cod.

"Ah!" said the old gentleman, following the direction of my gaze, "fine 
fellow that, ain't he?"

"Quite uncommon," I murmured; and George asked the old man how much he 
thought it weighed.

"Eighteen pounds six ounces," said our friend, rising and taking down his 
coat.  "Yes," he continued, "it wur sixteen year ago, come the third o' 
next month, that I landed him.  I caught him just below the bridge with a 
minnow.  They told me he wur in the river, and I said I'd have him, and 
so I did.  You don't see many fish that size about here now, I'm 
thinking.  Good-night, gentlemen, good-night."

And out he went, and left us alone.

We could not take our eyes off the fish after that.  It really was a 
remarkably fine fish.  We were still looking at it, when the local 
carrier, who had just stopped at the inn, came to the door of the room 
with a pot of beer in his hand, and he also looked at the fish.

"Good-sized trout, that," said George, turning round to him.

"Ah! you may well say that, sir," replied the man; and then, after a pull 
at his beer, he added, "Maybe you wasn't here, sir, when that fish was 
caught?"

"No," we told him.  We were strangers in the neighbourhood.

"Ah!" said the carrier, "then, of course, how should you?  It was nearly 
five years ago that I caught that trout."

"Oh! was it you who caught it, then?" said I.

"Yes, sir," replied the genial old fellow.  "I caught him just below the 
lock - leastways, what was the lock then - one Friday afternoon; and the 
remarkable thing about it is that I caught him with a fly.  I'd gone out 
pike fishing, bless you, never thinking of a trout, and when I saw that 
whopper on the end of my line, blest if it didn't quite take me aback.  
Well, you see, he weighed twenty-six pound.  Good-night, gentlemen, good-
night."

Five minutes afterwards, a third man came in, and described how he had 
caught it early one morning, with bleak; and then he left, and a stolid, 
solemn-looking, middle-aged individual came in, and sat down over by the 
window.

None of us spoke for a while; but, at length, George turned to the new 
comer, and said:

"I beg your pardon, I hope you will forgive the liberty that we - perfect 
strangers in the neighbourhood - are taking, but my friend here and 
myself would be so much obliged if you would tell us how you caught that 
trout up there."

"Why, who told you I caught that trout!" was the surprised query.

We said that nobody had told us so, but somehow or other we felt 
instinctively that it was he who had done it.

"Well, it's a most remarkable thing - most remarkable," answered the 
stolid stranger, laughing; "because, as a matter of fact, you are quite 
right.  I did catch it.  But fancy your guessing it like that.  Dear me, 
it's really a most remarkable thing."

And then he went on, and told us how it had taken him half an hour to 
land it, and how it had broken his rod.  He said he had weighed it 
carefully when he reached home, and it had turned the scale at thirty-
four pounds.

He went in his turn, and when he was gone, the landlord came in to us.  
We told him the various histories we had heard about his trout, and he 
was immensely amused, and we all laughed very heartily.

"Fancy Jim Bates and Joe Muggles and Mr. Jones and old Billy Maunders all 
telling you that they had caught it.  Ha! ha! ha!  Well, that is good," 
said the honest old fellow, laughing heartily.  "Yes, they are the sort 
to give it ME, to put up in MY parlour, if THEY had caught it, they are!  
Ha! ha! ha!"

And then he told us the real history of the fish.  It seemed that he had 
caught it himself, years ago, when he was quite a lad; not by any art or 
skill, but by that unaccountable luck that appears to always wait upon a 
boy when he plays the wag from school, and goes out fishing on a sunny 
afternoon, with a bit of string tied on to the end of a tree.

He said that bringing home that trout had saved him from a whacking, and 
that even his school-master had said it was worth the rule-of-three and 
practice put together.

He was called out of the room at this point, and George and I again 
turned our gaze upon the fish.

It really was a most astonishing trout.  The more we looked at it, the 
more we marvelled at it.

It excited George so much that he climbed up on the back of a chair to 
get a better view of it.

And then the chair slipped, and George clutched wildly at the trout-case 
to save himself, and down it came with a crash, George and the chair on 
top of it.

"You haven't injured the fish, have you?" I cried in alarm, rushing up.

"I hope not," said George, rising cautiously and looking about.

But he had.  That trout lay shattered into a thousand fragments - I say a 
thousand, but they may have only been nine hundred.  I did not count 
them.

We thought it strange and unaccountable that a stuffed trout should break 
up into little pieces like that.

And so it would have been strange and unaccountable, if it had been a 
stuffed trout, but it was not.

That trout was plaster-of-Paris.




CHAPTER XVIII.


LOCKS. - GEORGE AND I ARE PHOTOGRAPHED. - WALLINGFORD. - DORCHESTER. - 
ABINGDON. - A FAMILY MAN. - A GOOD SPOT FOR DROWNING. - A DIFFICULT BIT 
OF WATER. - DEMORALIZING EFFECT OF RIVER AIR.

WE left Streatley early the next morning, and pulled up to Culham, and 
slept under the canvas, in the backwater there.

The river is not extraordinarily interesting between Streatley and 
Wallingford.  From Cleve you get a stretch of six and a half miles 
without a lock.  I believe this is the longest uninterrupted stretch 
anywhere above Teddington, and the Oxford Club make use of it for their 
trial eights.

But however satisfactory this absence of locks may be to rowing-men, it 
is to be regretted by the mere pleasure-seeker.

For myself, I am fond of locks.  They pleasantly break the monotony of 
the pull.  I like sitting in the boat and slowly rising out of the cool 
depths up into new reaches and fresh views; or sinking down, as it were, 
out of the world, and then waiting, while the gloomy gates creak, and the 
narrow strip of day-light between them widens till the fair smiling river 
lies full before you, and you push your little boat out from its brief 
prison on to the welcoming waters once again.

They are picturesque little spots, these locks.  The stout old lock-
keeper, or his cheerful-looking wife, or bright-eyed daughter, are 
pleasant folk to have a passing chat with. *  You meet other boats there, 
and river gossip is exchanged.  The Thames would not be the fairyland it 
is without its flower-decked locks.

* Or rather WERE.  The Conservancy of late seems to have constituted 
itself into a society for the employment of idiots.  A good many of the 
new lock-keepers, especially in the more crowded portions of the river, 
are excitable, nervous old men, quite unfitted for their post.

Talking of locks reminds me of an accident George and I very nearly had 
one summer's morning at Hampton Court.

It was a glorious day, and the lock was crowded; and, as is a common 
practice up the river, a speculative photographer was taking a picture of 
us all as we lay upon the rising waters.

I did not catch what was going on at first, and was, therefore, extremely 
surprised at noticing George hurriedly smooth out his trousers, ruffle up 
his hair, and stick his cap on in a rakish manner at the back of his 
head, and then, assuming an expression of mingled affability and sadness, 
sit down in a graceful attitude, and try to hide his feet.

My first idea was that he had suddenly caught sight of some girl he knew, 
and I looked about to see who it was.  Everybody in the lock seemed to 
have been suddenly struck wooden.  They were all standing or sitting 
about in the most quaint and curious attitudes I have ever seen off a 
Japanese fan.  All the girls were smiling.  Oh, they did look so sweet!  
And all the fellows were frowning, and looking stern and noble.

And then, at last, the truth flashed across me, and I wondered if I 
should be in time.  Ours was the first boat, and it would be unkind of me 
to spoil the man's picture, I thought.

So I faced round quickly, and took up a position in the prow, where I 
leant with careless grace upon the hitcher, in an attitude suggestive of 
agility and strength.  I arranged my hair with a curl over the forehead, 
and threw an air of tender wistfulness into my expression, mingled with a 
touch of cynicism, which I am told suits me.

As we stood, waiting for the eventful moment, I heard someone behind call 
out:

"Hi! look at your nose."

I could not turn round to see what was the matter, and whose nose it was 
that was to be looked at.  I stole a side-glance at George's nose!  It 
was all right - at all events, there was nothing wrong with it that could 
be altered.  I squinted down at my own, and that seemed all that could be 
expected also.

"Look at your nose, you stupid ass!" came the same voice again, louder.

And then another voice cried:

"Push your nose out, can't you, you - you two with the dog!"

Neither George nor I dared to turn round.  The man's hand was on the cap, 
and the picture might be taken any moment.  Was it us they were calling 
to?  What was the matter with our noses?  Why were they to be pushed out!

But now the whole lock started yelling, and a stentorian voice from the 
back shouted:

"Look at your boat, sir; you in the red and black caps.  It's your two 
corpses that will get taken in that photo, if you ain't quick."

We looked then, and saw that the nose of our boat had got fixed under the 
woodwork of the lock, while the in-coming water was rising all around it, 
and tilting it up.  In another moment we should be over.  Quick as 
thought, we each seized an oar, and a vigorous blow against the side of 
the lock with the butt-ends released the boat, and sent us sprawling on 
our backs.

We did not come out well in that photograph, George and I.  Of course, as 
was to be expected, our luck ordained it, that the man should set his 
wretched machine in motion at the precise moment that we were both lying 
on our backs with a wild expression of "Where am I? and what is it?" on 
our faces, and our four feet waving madly in the air.

Our feet were undoubtedly the leading article in that photograph.  
Indeed, very little else was to be seen.  They filled up the foreground 
entirely.  Behind them, you caught glimpses of the other boats, and bits 
of the surrounding scenery; but everything and everybody else in the lock 
looked so utterly insignificant and paltry compared with our feet, that 
all the other people felt quite ashamed of themselves, and refused to 
subscribe to the picture.

The owner of one steam launch, who had bespoke six copies, rescinded the 
order on seeing the negative.  He said he would take them if anybody 
could show him his launch, but nobody could.  It was somewhere behind 
George's right foot.

There was a good deal of unpleasantness over the business.  The 
photographer thought we ought to take a dozen copies each, seeing that 
the photo was about nine-tenths us, but we declined.  We said we had no 
objection to being photo'd full-length, but we preferred being taken the 
right way up.

Wallingford, six miles above Streatley, is a very ancient town, and has 
been an active centre for the making of English history.  It was a rude, 
mud-built town in the time of the Britons, who squatted there, until the 
Roman legions evicted them; and replaced their clay-baked walls by mighty 
fortifications, the trace of which Time has not yet succeeded in sweeping 
away, so well those old-world masons knew how to build.

But Time, though he halted at Roman walls, soon crumbled Romans to dust; 
and on the ground, in later years, fought savage Saxons and huge Danes, 
until the Normans came.

It was a walled and fortified town up to the time of the Parliamentary 
War, when it suffered a long and bitter siege from Fairfax.  It fell at 
last, and then the walls were razed.

From Wallingford up to Dorchester the neighbourhood of the river grows 
more hilly, varied, and picturesque.  Dorchester stands half a mile from 
the river.  It can be reached by paddling up the Thame, if you have a 
small boat; but the best way is to leave the river at Day's Lock, and 
take a walk across the fields.  Dorchester is a delightfully peaceful old 
place, nestling in stillness and silence and drowsiness.

Dorchester, like Wallingford, was a city in ancient British times; it was 
then called Caer Doren, "the city on the water."  In more recent times 
the Romans formed a great camp here, the fortifications surrounding which 
now seem like low, even hills.  In Saxon days it was the capital of 
Wessex.  It is very old, and it was very strong and great once.  Now it 
sits aside from the stirring world, and nods and dreams.

Round Clifton Hampden, itself a wonderfully pretty village, old-
fashioned, peaceful, and dainty with flowers, the river scenery is rich 
and beautiful.  If you stay the night on land at Clifton, you cannot do 
better than put up at the "Barley Mow."  It is, without exception, I 
should say, the quaintest, most old-world inn up the river.  It stands on 
the right of the bridge, quite away from the village.  Its low-pitched 
gables and thatched roof and latticed windows give it quite a story-book 
appearance, while inside it is even still more once-upon-a-timeyfied.

It would not be a good place for the heroine of a modern novel to stay 
at.  The heroine of a modern novel is always "divinely tall," and she is 
ever "drawing herself up to her full height."  At the "Barley Mow" she 
would bump her head against the ceiling each time she did this.

It would also be a bad house for a drunken man to put up at.  There are 
too many surprises in the way of unexpected steps down into this room and 
up into that; and as for getting upstairs to his bedroom, or ever finding 
his bed when he got up, either operation would be an utter impossibility 
to him.

We were up early the next morning, as we wanted to be in Oxford by the 
afternoon.  It is surprising how early one can get up, when camping out.  
One does not yearn for "just another five minutes" nearly so much, lying 
wrapped up in a rug on the boards of a boat, with a Gladstone bag for a 
pillow, as one does in a featherbed.  We had finished breakfast, and were 
through Clifton Lock by half-past eight.

From Clifton to Culham the river banks are flat, monotonous, and 
uninteresting, but, after you get through Culhalm Lock - the coldest and 
deepest lock on the river - the landscape improves.

At Abingdon, the river passes by the streets.  Abingdon is a typical 
country town of the smaller order - quiet, eminently respectable, clean, 
and desperately dull.  It prides itself on being old, but whether it can 
compare in this respect with Wallingford and Dorchester seems doubtful.  
A famous abbey stood here once, and within what is left of its sanctified 
walls they brew bitter ale nowadays.

In St. Nicholas Church, at Abingdon, there is a monument to John 
Blackwall and his wife Jane, who both, after leading a happy married 
life, died on the very same day, August 21, 1625; and in St. Helen's 
Church, it is recorded that W. Lee, who died in 1637, "had in his 
lifetime issue from his loins two hundred lacking but three."  If you 
work this out you will find that Mr. W. Lee's family numbered one hundred 
and ninety-seven.  Mr. W. Lee - five times Mayor of Abingdon - was, no 
doubt, a benefactor to his generation, but I hope there are not many of 
his kind about in this overcrowded nineteenth century.

From Abingdon to Nuneham Courteney is a lovely stretch.  Nuneham Park is 
well worth a visit.  It can be viewed on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  The 
house contains a fine collection of pictures and curiosities, and the 
grounds are very beautiful.

The pool under Sandford lasher, just behind the lock, is a very good 
place to drown yourself in.  The undercurrent is terribly strong, and if 
you once get down into it you are all right.  An obelisk marks the spot 
where two men have already been drowned, while bathing there; and the 
steps of the obelisk are generally used as a diving-board by young men 
now who wish to see if the place really IS dangerous.

Iffley Lock and Mill, a mile before you reach Oxford, is a favourite 
subject with the river-loving brethren of the brush.  The real article, 
however, is rather disappointing, after the pictures.  Few things, I have 
noticed, come quite up to the pictures of them, in this world.

We passed through Iffley Lock at about half-past twelve, and then, having 
tidied up the boat and made all ready for landing, we set to work on our 
last mile.

Between Iffley and Oxford is the most difficult bit of the river I know.  
You want to be born on that bit of water, to understand it.  I have been 
over it a fairish number of times, but I have never been able to get the 
hang of it.  The man who could row a straight course from Oxford to 
Iffley ought to be able to live comfortably, under one roof, with his 
wife, his mother-in-law, his elder sister, and the old servant who was in 
the family when he was a baby.

First the current drives you on to the right bank, and then on to the 
left, then it takes you out into the middle, turns you round three times, 
and carries you up stream again, and always ends by trying to smash you 
up against a college barge.

Of course, as a consequence of this, we got in the way of a good many 
other boats, during the mile, and they in ours, and, of course, as a 
consequence of that, a good deal of bad language occurred.

I don't know why it should be, but everybody is always so exceptionally 
irritable on the river.  Little mishaps, that you would hardly notice on 
dry land, drive you nearly frantic with rage, when they occur on the 
water.  When Harris or George makes an ass of himself on dry land, I 
smile indulgently; when they behave in a chuckle-head way on the river, I 
use the most blood-curdling language to them.  When another boat gets in 
my way, I feel I want to take an oar and kill all the people in it.

The mildest tempered people, when on land, become violent and blood-
thirsty when in a boat.   I did a little boating once with a young lady.  
She was naturally of the sweetest and gentlest disposition imaginable, 
but on the river it was quite awful to hear her.

"Oh, drat the man!" she would exclaim, when some unfortunate sculler 
would get in her way; "why don't he look where he's going?"

And, "Oh, bother the silly old thing!" she would say indignantly, when 
the sail would not go up properly.  And she would catch hold of it, and 
shake it quite brutally.

Yet, as I have said, when on shore she was kind-hearted and amiable 
enough.

The air of the river has a demoralising effect upon one's temper, and 
this it is, I suppose, which causes even barge men to be sometimes rude 
to one another, and to use language which, no doubt, in their calmer 
moments they regret.




CHAPTER XIX.


OXFORD. - MONTMORENCY'S IDEA OF HEAVEN. - THE HIRED UP-RIVER BOAT, ITS 
BEAUTIES AND ADVANTAGES. - THE "PRIDE OF THE THAMES." - THE WEATHER 
CHANGES. - THE RIVER UNDER DIFFERENT ASPECTS. - NOT A CHEERFUL EVENING. - 
YEARNINGS FOR THE UNATTAINABLE. - THE CHEERY CHAT GOES ROUND. - GEORGE 
PERFORMS UPON THE BANJO. - A MOURNFUL MELODY. - ANOTHER WET DAY. - 
FLIGHT. - A LITTLE SUPPER AND A TOAST.

WE spent two very pleasant days at Oxford.  There are plenty of dogs in 
the town of Oxford.  Montmorency had eleven fights on the first day, and 
fourteen on the second, and evidently thought he had got to heaven.

Among folk too constitutionally weak, or too constitutionally lazy, 
whichever it may be, to relish up-stream work, it is a common practice to 
get a boat at Oxford, and row down.  For the energetic, however, the up-
stream journey is certainly to be preferred.  It does not seem good to be 
always going with the current.  There is more satisfaction in squaring 
one's back, and fighting against it, and winning one's way forward in 
spite of it - at least, so I feel, when Harris and George are sculling 
and I am steering.

To those who do contemplate making Oxford their starting-place, I would 
say, take your own boat - unless, of course, you can take someone else's 
without any possible danger of being found out.  The boats that, as a 
rule, are let for hire on the Thames above Marlow, are very good boats.  
They are fairly water-tight; and so long as they are handled with care, 
they rarely come to pieces, or sink.  There are places in them to sit 
down on, and they are complete with all the necessary arrangements - or 
nearly all - to enable you to row them and steer them.

But they are not ornamental.  The boat you hire up the river above Marlow 
is not the sort of boat in which you can flash about and give yourself 
airs.  The hired up-river boat very soon puts a stop to any nonsense of 
that sort on the part of its occupants.  That is its chief - one may say, 
its only recommendation.

The man in the hired up-river boat is modest and retiring.  He likes to 
keep on the shady side, underneath the trees, and to do most of his 
travelling early in the morning or late at night, when there are not many 
people about on the river to look at him.

When the man in the hired up-river boat sees anyone he knows, he gets out 
on to the bank, and hides behind a tree.

I was one of a party who hired an up-river boat one summer, for a few 
days' trip.  We had none of us ever seen the hired up-river boat before; 
and we did not know what it was when we did see it.

We had written for a boat - a double sculling skiff; and when we went 
down with our bags to the yard, and gave our names, the man said:

"Oh, yes; you're the party that wrote for a double sculling skiff.  It's 
all right.  Jim, fetch round THE PRIDE OF THE THAMES."

The boy went, and re-appeared five minutes afterwards, struggling with an 
antediluvian chunk of wood, that looked as though it had been recently 
dug out of somewhere, and dug out carelessly, so as to have been 
unnecessarily damaged in the process.

My own idea, on first catching sight of the object, was that it was a 
Roman relic of some sort, - relic of WHAT I do not know, possibly of a 
coffin.

The neighbourhood of the upper Thames is rich in Roman relics, and my 
surmise seemed to me a very probable one; but our serious young man, who 
is a bit of a geologist, pooh-poohed my Roman relic theory, and said it 
was clear to the meanest intellect (in which category he seemed to be 
grieved that he could not conscientiously include mine) that the thing 
the boy had found was the fossil of a whale; and he pointed out to us 
various evidences proving that it must have belonged to the preglacial 
period.

To settle the dispute, we appealed to the boy.  We told him not to be 
afraid, but to speak the plain truth: Was it the fossil of a pre-Adamite 
whale, or was it an early Roman coffin?

The boy said it was THE PRIDE OF THE THAMES.

We thought this a very humorous answer on the part of the boy at first, 
and somebody gave him twopence as a reward for his ready wit; but when he 
persisted in keeping up the joke, as we thought, too long, we got vexed 
with him.

"Come, come, my lad!" said our captain sharply, "don't let us have any 
nonsense.  You take your mother's washing-tub home again, and bring us a 
boat."

The boat-builder himself came up then, and assured us, on his word, as a 
practical man, that the thing really was a boat - was, in fact, THE boat, 
the "double sculling skiff" selected to take us on our trip down the 
river.

We grumbled a good deal.  We thought he might, at least, have had it 
whitewashed or tarred - had SOMETHING done to it to distinguish it from a 
bit of a wreck; but he could not see any fault in it.

He even seemed offended at our remarks.  He said he had picked us out the 
best boat in all his stock, and he thought we might have been more 
grateful.

He said it, THE PRIDE OF THE THAMES, had been in use, just as it now 
stood (or rather as it now hung together), for the last forty years, to 
his knowledge, and nobody had complained of it before, and he did not see 
why we should be the first to begin.

We argued no more.

We fastened the so-called boat together with some pieces of string, got a 
bit of wall-paper and pasted over the shabbier places, said our prayers, 
and stepped on board.

They charged us thirty-five shillings for the loan of the remnant for six 
days; and we could have bought the thing out-and-out for four-and-
sixpence at any sale of drift-wood round the coast.

The weather changed on the third day, - Oh! I am talking about our 
present trip now, - and we started from Oxford upon our homeward journey 
in the midst of a steady drizzle.

The river - with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding 
gold the grey-green beech- trunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood 
paths, chasing shadows o'er the shallows, flinging diamonds from the 
mill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with the weirs' 
white waters, silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening every 
tiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in the 
rushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on many a far 
sail, making soft the air with glory - is a golden fairy stream.

But the river - chill and weary, with the ceaseless rain-drops falling on 
its brown and sluggish waters, with a sound as of a woman, weeping low in 
some dark chamber; while the woods, all dark and silent, shrouded in 
their mists of vapour, stand like ghosts upon the margin; silent ghosts 
with eyes reproachful, like the ghosts of evil actions, like the ghosts 
of friends neglected - is a spirit-haunted water through the land of vain 
regrets.

Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature.  Mother Earth looks at us with such 
dull, soulless eyes, when the sunlight has died away from out of her.  It 
makes us sad to be with her then; she does not seem to know us or to care 
for us.  She is as a widow who has lost the husband she loved, and her 
children touch her hand, and look up into her eyes, but gain no smile 
from her.

We rowed on all that day through the rain, and very melancholy work it 
was.  We pretended, at first, that we enjoyed it.  We said it was a 
change, and that we liked to see the river under all its different 
aspects.  We said we could not expect to have it all sunshine, nor should 
we wish it.  We told each other that Nature was beautiful, even in her 
tears.

Indeed, Harris and I were quite enthusiastic about the business, for the 
first few hours.  And we sang a song about a gipsy's life, and how 
delightful a gipsy's existence was! - free to storm and sunshine, and to 
every wind that blew! - and how he enjoyed the rain, and what a lot of 
good it did him; and how he laughed at people who didn't like it.

George took the fun more soberly, and stuck to the umbrella.

We hoisted the cover before we had lunch, and kept it up all the 
afternoon, just leaving a little space in the bow, from which one of us 
could paddle and keep a look-out.  In this way we made nine miles, and 
pulled up for the night a little below Day's Lock.

I cannot honestly say that we had a merry evening.  The rain poured down 
with quiet persistency.  Everything in the boat was damp and clammy.  
Supper was not a success.  Cold veal pie, when you don't feel hungry, is 
apt to cloy.  I felt I wanted whitebait and a cutlet; Harris babbled of 
soles and white-sauce, and passed the remains of his pie to Montmorency, 
who declined it, and, apparently insulted by the offer, went and sat over 
at the other end of the boat by himself.

George requested that we would not talk about these things, at all events 
until he had finished his cold boiled beef without mustard.

We played penny nap after supper.  We played for about an hour and a 
half, by the end of which time George had won fourpence - George always 
is lucky at cards - and Harris and I had lost exactly twopence each.

We thought we would give up gambling then.  As Harris said, it breeds an 
unhealthy excitement when carried too far.  George offered to go on and 
give us our revenge; but Harris and I decided not to battle any further 
against Fate.

After that, we mixed ourselves some toddy, and sat round and talked.  
George told us about a man he had known, who had come up the river two 
years ago and who had slept out in a damp boat on just such another night 
as that was, and it had given him rheumatic fever, and nothing was able 
to save him, and he had died in great agony ten days afterwards.  George 
said he was quite a young man, and was engaged to be married.  He said it 
was one of the saddest things he had ever known.

And that put Harris in mind of a friend of his, who had been in the 
Volunteers, and who had slept out under canvas one wet night down at 
Aldershot, "on just such another night as this," said Harris; and he had 
woke up in the morning a cripple for life.  Harris said he would 
introduce us both to the man when we got back to town; it would make our 
hearts bleed to see him.

This naturally led to some pleasant chat about sciatica, fevers, chills, 
lung diseases, and bronchitis; and Harris said how very awkward it would 
be if one of us were taken seriously ill in the night, seeing how far 
away we were from a doctor.

There seemed to be a desire for something frolicksome to follow upon this 
conversation, and in a weak moment I suggested that George should get out 
his banjo, and see if he could not give us a comic song.

I will say for George that he did not want any pressing.  There was no 
nonsense about having left his music at home, or anything of that sort.  
He at once fished out his instrument, and commenced to play "Two Lovely 
Black Eyes."

I had always regarded "Two Lovely Black Eyes" as rather a commonplace 
tune until that evening.  The rich vein of sadness that George extracted 
from it quite surprised me.

The desire that grew upon Harris and myself, as the mournful strains 
progressed, was to fall upon each other's necks and weep; but by great 
effort we kept back the rising tears, and listened to the wild yearnful 
melody in silence.

When the chorus came we even made a desperate effort to be merry.  We re-
filled our glasses and joined in; Harris, in a voice trembling with 
emotion, leading, and George and I following a few words behind:


"Two lovely black eyes;
Oh! what a surprise!
Only for telling a man he was wrong,
Two - "


There we broke down.  The unutterable pathos of George's accompaniment to 
that "two" we were, in our then state of depression, unable to bear.  
Harris sobbed like a little child, and the dog howled till I thought his 
heart or his jaw must surely break.

George wanted to go on with another verse.  He thought that when he had 
got a little more into the tune, and could throw more "abandon," as it 
were, into the rendering, it might not seem so sad.  The feeling of the 
majority, however, was opposed to the experiment.

There being nothing else to do, we went to bed - that is, we undressed 
ourselves, and tossed about at the bottom of the boat for some three or 
four hours.  After which, we managed to get some fitful slumber until 
five a.m., when we all got up and had breakfast.

The second day was exactly like the first.  The rain continued to pour 
down, and we sat, wrapped up in our mackintoshes, underneath the canvas, 
and drifted slowly down.

One of us - I forget which one now, but I rather think it was myself - 
made a few feeble attempts during the course of the morning to work up 
the old gipsy foolishness about being children of Nature and enjoying the 
wet; but it did not go down well at all.  That -


"I care not for the rain, not I!"


was so painfully evident, as expressing the sentiments of each of us, 
that to sing it seemed unnecessary.

On one point we were all agreed, and that was that, come what might, we 
would go through with this job to the bitter end.  We had come out for a 
fortnight's enjoyment on the river, and a fortnight's enjoyment on the 
river we meant to have.  If it killed us! well, that would be a sad thing 
for our friends and relations, but it could not be helped.  We felt that 
to give in to the weather in a climate such as ours would be a most 
disastrous precedent.

"It's only two days more," said Harris, "and we are young and strong.  We 
may get over it all right, after all."

At about four o'clock we began to discuss our arrangements for the 
evening.  We were a little past Goring then, and we decided to paddle on 
to Pangbourne, and put up there for the night.

"Another jolly evening!" murmured George.

We sat and mused on the prospect.  We should be in at Pangbourne by five.  
We should finish dinner at, say, half-past six.  After that we could walk 
about the village in the pouring rain until bed-time; or we could sit in 
a dimly-lit bar-parlour and read the almanac.

"Why, the Alhambra would be almost more lively," said Harris, venturing 
his head outside the cover for a moment and taking a survey of the sky.

"With a little supper at the - * to follow," I added, half unconsciously.

* A capital little out-of-the-way restaurant, in the neighbourhood of - , 
where you can get one of the best-cooked and cheapest little French 
dinners or suppers that I know of, with an excellent bottle of Beaune, 
for three-and-six; and which I am not going to be idiot enough to 
advertise.

"Yes it's almost a pity we've made up our minds to stick to this boat," 
answered Harris; and then there was silence for a while.

"If we HADN'T made up our minds to contract our certain deaths in this 
bally old coffin," observed George, casting a glance of intense 
malevolence over the boat, "it might be worth while to mention that 
there's a train leaves Pangbourne, I know, soon after five, which would 
just land us in town in comfortable time to get a chop, and then go on to 
the place you mentioned afterwards."

Nobody spoke.  We looked at one another, and each one seemed to see his 
own mean and guilty thoughts reflected in the faces of the others.  In 
silence, we dragged out and overhauled the Gladstone.  We looked up the 
river and down the river; not a soul was in sight!

Twenty minutes later, three figures, followed by a shamed-looking dog, 
might have been seen creeping stealthily from the boat-house at the 
"Swan" towards the railway station, dressed in the following neither neat 
nor gaudy costume:

Black leather shoes, dirty; suit of boating flannels, very dirty; brown 
felt hat, much battered; mackintosh, very wet; umbrella.

We had deceived the boatman at Pangbourne.  We had not had the face to 
tell him that we were running away from the rain.  We had left the boat, 
and all it contained, in his charge, with instructions that it was to be 
ready for us at nine the next morning.  If, we said - IF anything 
unforeseen should happen, preventing our return, we would write to him.

We reached Paddington at seven, and drove direct to the restaurant I have 
before described, where we partook of a light meal, left Montmorency, 
together with suggestions for a supper to be ready at half-past ten, and 
then continued our way to Leicester Square.

We attracted a good deal of attention at the Alhambra.  On our presenting 
ourselves at the paybox we were gruffly directed to go round to Castle 
Street, and were informed that we were half-an-hour behind our time.

We convinced the man, with some difficulty, that we were NOT "the world-
renowned contortionists from the Himalaya Mountains," and he took our 
money and let us pass.

Inside we were a still greater success.  Our fine bronzed countenances 
and picturesque clothes were followed round the place with admiring gaze.  
We were the cynosure of every eye.

It was a proud moment for us all.

We adjourned soon after the first ballet, and wended our way back to the 
restaurant, where supper was already awaiting us.

I must confess to enjoying that supper.  For about ten days we seemed to 
have been living, more or less, on nothing but cold meat, cake, and bread 
and jam.  It had been a simple, a nutritious diet; but there had been 
nothing exciting about it, and the odour of Burgundy, and the smell of 
French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as 
a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man.

We pegged and quaffed away in silence for a while, until the time came 
when, instead of sitting bolt upright, and grasping the knife and fork 
firmly, we leant back in our chairs and worked slowly and carelessly - 
when we stretched out our legs beneath the table, let our napkins fall, 
unheeded, to the floor, and found time to more critically examine the 
smoky ceiling than we had hitherto been able to do - when we rested our 
glasses at arm's-length upon the table, and felt good, and thoughtful, 
and forgiving.

Then Harris, who was sitting next the window, drew aside the curtain and 
looked out upon the street.

It glistened darkly in the wet, the dim lamps flickered with each gust, 
the rain splashed steadily into the puddles and trickled down the water-
spouts into the running gutters.  A few soaked wayfarers hurried past, 
crouching beneath their dripping umbrellas, the women holding up their 
skirts.

"Well," said Harris, reaching his hand out for his glass, "we have had a 
pleasant trip, and my hearty thanks for it to old Father Thames - but I 
think we did well to chuck it when we did.  Here's to Three Men well out 
of a Boat!"

And Montmorency, standing on his hind legs, before the window, peering 
out into the night, gave a short bark of decided concurrence with the 
toast.





End of the Project Gutenberg eText Three Men in a Boat