Three men in a boat / Трое в лодке, не считая собаки. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Джером Клапка Джером

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

      And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow, the nail would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it. Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made;

      and, about midnight, the picture would be up – very crooked and insecure, and everybody dead beat and wretched34 – except Uncle Podger.

      “There you are,” he would say, stepping heavily off the chair and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride. “Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like that!”

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

      I said:

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

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

      George said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      On the contrary, I feel more that I want to stop in bed till the last moment, and then come down and have my breakfast. Once or twice I have got out at six and half-dressed myself, and have taken my drawers and towel, and started dismally off. But I haven’t enjoyed it. They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind, waiting for me, when I go to bathe in the early morning; and they pick out all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and they sharpen up the rocks and cover the points СКАЧАТЬ