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    Three Men In A Boat
    Three Men In A Boat
    Three Men In A Boat
    Ebook237 pages6 hours

    Three Men In A Boat

    By Jerome K. Jerome

    4/5

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    J. and his two friends, George and Harris, decide to take a short holiday to escape the stress of their everyday lives, and so the three companions—along with a fox terrier named Montmorency—embark on a leisure tour up the Thames River, travelling from Kingston to Oxford, and musing about their lives and their trip.

    Three Men in a Boat is generally accepted as a work of humour due to the amusing anecdotes the three men relate during their trip up the Thames. However, author Jerome K. Jerome originally intended the book to be a travel guide for tourists participating in the then-popular activity of leisure boating. Though the book did serve as a useful travel guide—and, in fact, still does, as many of the inns and pubs named in the work are still open—the timeless humour of Jerome’s writing and the extreme popularity of the book in Great Britain transformed it into an important piece of popular culture as well.

    HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 18, 2014
    ISBN9781443435475
    Author

    Jerome K. Jerome

    Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in 1859 and was brought up in London. He started work as a railway clerk at fourteen, and later was employed as a schoolmaster, actor and journalist. He published two volumes of comic essays and in 1889 Three Men in a Boat. This was an instant success. His new-found wealth enabled him to become one of the founders of The Idler, a humorous magazine which published pieces by W W Jacobs, Bret Harte, Mark Twain and others. In 1900 he wrote a sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, which follows the adventures of the three protagonists on a walking tour through Germany. Jerome married in 1888 and had a daughter. He served as an ambulance driver on the Western Front during the First World War and died in 1927.

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    Reviews for Three Men In A Boat

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Timeless humor. Very easy to read.
    • 4/5
      This is a gentle, fitfully humorous book about three men and a dog taking a boat trip up the Thames from London (and back). It is full of humorous digressions, a couple of which will make you chuckle a bit. Mostly, however, these episodes just serve to show that human nature hasn't changed since 1889 when this was written. There are also poetic passages extolling the landscape as well as factual passages about particular places. I found myself turning to the Internet again and again to look things up--and it doesn't appear much has changed. You could, in fact, still use this as a travel guide for such a journey. And despite the mishaps portrayed, you'll want to go.
    • 3/5
      Light, amusing and occasionally brilliantly written (I'm a sucker for alliteration). Full of digressions, each of which is just about precisely the right length. > 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 today. … 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.> We had just commenced the third course—the bread and jam—when a gentleman in shirtsleeves 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.…> 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 fingermark on it.> 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 raindrops 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.
    • 4/5
      There are loads of reviews on this work, so this is only to say, I loved this book. It is one I will be seeking in hardcover so that I may read it again. I had the ebook version, and although the story was still wonderful, the illustrations were tiny. I need to hold this book, flip the pages back and forth, reread passages, underline some of them and make notes in the margins. I want to have a relationship with it and I can't do that with an ebook. There are not many books I feel that way about.This one had me laughing out-loud frequently. Not hysterical laughing, but amused laughing. Much of it felt modern, but certain passages made the reader aware of the times the book was written in. I took my time reading this, because I wanted to appreciate it. It is farce, comedy, poetic, philosophical, and retrospective. Good, clean fun. The only thing which could make it better for me, is if I had been on a boating trip on the Thames, but the author describes it in such a way, that I feel I have been.
    • 4/5
      The classic tale of three young men who decide to take a respite from their lives and spend two weeks rowing up the river Thames.I knew this was a comic novel but I wasn't quite prepared for just how often this book would have me laughing out loud. The many asides our narrator gives on his previous boating experiences, the locales that surround him, and the adventures that he and his two friends as well as his dog get up to had me giggling loudly both at home and in public. Probably best read if you've had some other experience with Victorian literature but highly recommended if you haven't picked this one up already.
    • 4/5
      Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) recounts a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston to Oxford and back again. The story focuses on George, Harris, Jerome, and Jerome’s dog, Montmorency, as they plan the trip and recount past stories in the course of their adventures. Jerome humorously muses on the nature of cheese, the habit of visiting tombs in picturesque villages, historical Thames islands like Magna Charta Island, their visitors such as Kings John and Henry VIII, the nature of Victorian-era flirting, the relationships of dogs, the methods of rowing, fish stories, and more. Though some of the situations Jerome describes are uniquely nineteenth-century, the wit of his writing will entertain readers over a hundred years later. This Folio Society edition reprints the original 1889 text with illustrations from Paul Cox that capture the humor of Jerome’s text.
    • 3/5
      Mild fun up the Thames. This book was originally commissioned as a travelogue but it does seem to have hung on remarkably well. It takes about two hours to read, but it is best taken in small bites. It was originally copyright in 1889.
    • 5/5
      What a complete little gem this is! A quick read, only 100 pages, but I laughed from beginning to end. I was needing something funny to read, and this quickie really worked. Recommended!
    • 4/5
      Three Men in a Boat is exactly what it says on the cover -- a travelogue of three young men, plus the terror dog Montmorency, going boating on the Thames for a fortnight. Interspersed with stories from other boating holidays, stories closely or tenuously linked to the river or the towns passed through, and the odd Reflection on Life, this is a slow moving, poetical, and frequently comical ramble. Unlike many 'classics of English literature', which this book is advertised as on the back cover, this is not a horrid story about horrid people. I don't think that George, Harris, or the narrator would be people I would want to spend much time with, but they do appear to have a friendship that holds together despite the frustrations of their time together.
    • 1/5
      I didn't enjoy this, except in very small bursts. Most of the jokes didn't appeal to me, but I can easily see how others might find it funny. I'm very glad to be done reading it.
    • 3/5
      Mildly enjoyable - I don't find this type of humor funny, but I do find it amusing. I liked the excursions into the history of places along the river - a relief from the rather strained funny bits. Most of the "contemporary" stories - stories the three men tell, about their own actions and events that befell themselves and their friends and relations - are boring or unpleasant (the trick about the German song is really nasty). But overall, it's not bad to read; not a favorite, and not a particularly humorous book, but interesting. I thought I'd read it before, but apparently not; there are several scenes I think I would have remembered.
    • 2/5
      I understand completely why this was considered funny when it was published in London, August 1889.

      Three Dandy's & their dog go on a boating trip down the Thames and make quite the mess of it.

      The writing had a distinct air of pomposity to it (as those men must have been in those days) which might (still) be considered funny in particular circles, and I found that it fell quite flat.
    • 5/5
      Imagine Bertie Wooster and two pals and a fox terrier decide that to cure their general seediness and hypochondria, they will take a boat down the river Thames for a couple of weeks, camping out, cooking their own food and other wholesome entertainments. That is basically the tone and situation of this book. Laughed out loud at least once in every chapter.
    • 3/5
      A Victorian era collection of anecdotes about three impractical friends who decide a two-week boating holiday up the River Thames would be perfectly sublime. Little do these hypochondriacs suffering from 'overwork' take note of the practicalities involved. Along with fox-terrier Montmorency they wrestle with ropes, inclement weather, lack of a tin opener and other mishaps in this classic comedy. Fabulous to know that they were just as mad in 1889 as we are today!
    • 5/5
      Entertaining comedy.
    • 1/5
      no story just a bunch of anecdotes. should have been a short story book. the story weaved around the anecdotes was rather flat. a few giggles, but not as funny as expected. long passage without any action.
    • 4/5
      Hilarious. Overripe comedy in the style of Mark Twain. I subtract one star only for the excruciatingly long passages which mimic and mock lyrical writing of the 19th century; it's expertly done, and I'm sure it killed at the time, but today it's a bit much.
    • 4/5
      A funny, touching and enjoyable trip on the River Thames. Enjoyable with company that comes along and side trips the characters take you through.
    • 4/5
      If Monte Python and Oscar Wilde were to collaborate, I think they might have writen this book. The official title is "Three Men in a Boat: to say nothing of the dog" and it took me the good first half of the book to realize that Montmorency was the dog and not a companion along for the jaunt.
    • 2/5
      It looked like a breezy read, a good natured gently comical novel. Certainly it is not at all hard to read but nevertheless this book was a grind for me to get through. Humorous novels suffer a great disadvantage in that I tend to expect to find something to laugh at on each every page. This is quite a tall order and very hard for most books to accomplish. P.G. Wodehouse, Oscar Wilde, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett often make me laugh with their fiction but generally I try to avoid comedy novels. I prefer humour to be a facet of the novel rather than the focus. Novels which are based on plots, thrills and characterization, including serious novels often make me laugh when the author slip in humorous scenes or dialogue at unexpected moments. This help to balance the overall tone of the book for me. Dickens is often funny somewhere in his long novels, even Victor Hugo's Les Mis has funny bits.

      With Three Men in a Boat I am surprised to find that the humour totally fell flat for me. I find the humour in this book is very tame, very polite and centered on the silliness of the protagonists, particularly the narrator. The style of narration is also rather whimsical, going off on tangents with little supposedly comical vignettes every few paragraphs. Unfortunately I did not find any of it funny. The characters are indeed suitably silly but there is no depth to them, they are all self absorbed and I could not work up any interest in their antics. Tomfooleries like getting up late, waiting for a defiant kettle to boil, drinking horrible tea and whatnot leave me cold.

      The entire enterprise seems completely pointless from beginning to end, and not a single chuckle escaped me. OK, it is a beloved classic which has been in print for more than a century so I have to respect it for that. If you find it funny I respect that too, but humour is very subjective and I subjected myself to this. Ah well, what you gonna do?
    • 4/5
      Jerome K. Jerome wrote a leisurely chronicle of a summer's boating holiday on the Thames. It was published in 1889 when he was only thirty years old. It was a success as a popular humorous book and has remained in print to this day. While some of the book is pure farce his main approach to humor was understatement and outrageous exaggeration in a style that reminds one of some of Twain's comic writings. He described his technique thus:"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 pedantic---veracity, that the experienced angler is seen."His humor relies on the diabolic malice of inanimate objects when they escape from civilization: of the infrangibility of cans when the can opener has been left behind, the ingenuity of an untended rope, the cunning of kettles and leaking kerosene. His narrator is known simply as J. while his companions are Harris and George (though they are somewhat shadowy characters) and of course there is Montmorency, the dog."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 tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen."With a convivial narrator and two friends, to say nothing of the dog, this tale of a boat trip is simply one of the funniest and most delightful short books that I have ever read.
    • 4/5
      4.5 stars? It would be 5, but the occasional serious sections tossed in here and there - and the abrupt change of direction at the end - knocked it down a bit for me. One of the funniest books I've read in a long time, though. Highly recommended!
    • 3/5
      Three Men in a Boat (Xist Classics) Story of three men and how they plan to camp out while traveling around in a boat.So many things can go wrong and so do and how they deal with it.
    • 2/5
      Three men and their dog row a boat from Kingston to Oxford. This book was a huge seller when published in 1889. Initially devised as a means of highlighting various historical sites and places of interest along that stretch of river but it developed into more of a comedy. In some ways, sometimes, the humour is pretty clever but it generally failed to hit the mark with me but no doubt comedy tastes have changed considerably over the past 100 plus years. I preferred the limited historical details but these were islands in a sea of long digressions that gave vehicle to the authors humour. Some might still appreciate the funny stuff here but it wasn't for me.
    • 3/5
      An obviously good writer with a good sense of humour. But the views feel a little dated and the jokes and stories become a little wearing. The structure at times feels too formulaic. Despite this, it is an interesting look at leisure a century ago, and how things are still very much the same, but also different. It is only 190 pages long, but it still seemed to take me an inordinately long time to finish.
    • 5/5
      Light funny and entertaining as well as giving you a history lesson as J and friends travel up the thames. I now want to get a fox terrier :-)
    • 4/5
      Very amusing. Somehow, I had Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster narrating as I read.
    • 5/5
      What a complete little gem this is! A quick read, only 100 pages, but I laughed from beginning to end. I was needing something funny to read, and this quickie really worked. Recommended!
    • 4/5
      Enduringly hilarious.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic. Hysterical. Sly. Beautiful. Historical. Sarcastic. Witty. Read it.

    Book preview

    Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K. Jerome

    threemeninaboat_Outside_Front_Cover.jpg

    THREE MEN IN A BOAT

    (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

    Jerome K. Jerome

    HarperPerennialClassicsLogo.jpg

    CONTENTS

    Preface

    Chapter I

    Chapter II

    Chapter III

    Chapter IV

    Chapter V

    Chapter VI

    Chapter VII

    Chapter VIII

    Chapter IX

    Chapter X

    Chapter XI

    Chapter XII

    Chapter XIII

    Chapter XIV

    Chapter XV

    Chapter XVI

    Chapter XVII

    Chapter XVIII

    Chapter XIX

    About the Author

    About the Series

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    Preface

    The chief beauty of this book lies not so much in its literary style, or in the extent and usefulness of the information it conveys, as in its simple truthfulness. Its pages form the record of events that really happened. All that has been done is to colour them; and, for this, no extra charge has been made. George and Harris and Montmorency are not poetic ideals, but things of flesh and blood—especially George, who weighs about twelve stone. Other works may excel this in depth of thought and knowledge of human nature: other books may rival it in originality and size; but, for hopeless and incurable veracity, nothing yet discovered can surpass it. This, more than all its other charms, will, it is felt, make the volume precious in the eye of the earnest reader; and will lend additional weight to the lesson that the story teaches.

    LONDON, August, 1889

    Chapter I

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

    We were all feeling 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 a while, 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 cooperative 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 hearthrug, 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 seaside, and take exercise.

    Seaside! 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 seasick—on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boatloads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be seasick. 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 portholes 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

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