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.
