CHAPTER III.
Arrangements settled.--Harris's method of doing work.--How the elderly,family-man puts up a picture.--George makes a sensible, remark.--Delightsof early morning bathing.--Provisions for getting upset.
So, on the following evening, we again assembled, to discuss and arrangeour plans. Harris said:
"Now, the first thing to settle is what to take with us. Now, you get abit 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 alist."
That's Harris all over--so ready to take the burden of everythinghimself, and put it on the backs of other people.
He always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger. You never saw such acommotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podgerundertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from theframe-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 Podgerwould say:
"Oh, you leave that to _me_. Don't you, any of you, worry yourselvesabout that. _I'll_ do all that."
And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would send the girlout for sixpen'orth of nails, and then one of the boys after her to tellher what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually work down, andstart the whole house.
[Picture: Candle] "Now you go and get me my hammer, Will," he wouldshout; "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 toMr. Goggles, and tell him, 'Pa's kind regards, and hopes his leg'sbetter; 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 girlcomes back, she must go out again for a bit of picture-cord; andTom!--where's Tom?--Tom, you come here; I shall want you to hand me upthe picture."
And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come outof the frame, and he would try to save the glass, and cut himself; andthen he would spring round the room, looking for his handkerchief. Hecould not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coathe had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat, and allthe house had to leave off looking for his tools, and start looking forhis coat; while he would dance round and hinder them.
[Picture: Nails etc.] "Doesn't anybody in the whole house know where mycoat is? I never came across such a set in all my life--upon my word Ididn't. Six of you!--and you can't find a coat that I put down not fiveminutes ago! Well, of all the--"
Then he'd get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would callout:
"Oh, you can give it up! I've found it myself now. Might just as wellask 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 newglass had been got, and the tools, and the ladder, and the chair, and thecandle 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 thirdwould help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand hima nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take holdof 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 hewould stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if he was to bekept there all the evening.
The nail would be found at last, but by that time he would have lost thehammer.
"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 thehammer!"
We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lost sight ofthe mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in, and eachof us had to get up on the chair, beside him, and see if we could findit; and we would each discover it in a different place, and he would callus all fools, one after another, and tell us to get down. And he wouldtake the rule, and re-measure, and find that he wanted half thirty-oneand three-eighths inches from the corner, and would try to do it in hishead, and go mad.
And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive at differentresults, and sneer at one another. And in the general row, the originalnumber would be forgotten, and Uncle Podger would have to measure itagain.
He would use a bit of string this time, and at the critical moment, whenthe old fool was leaning over the chair at an angle of forty-five, andtrying to reach a point three inches beyond what was possible for him toreach, the string would slip, and down he would slide on to the piano, areally fine musical effect being produced by the suddenness with whichhis head and body struck all the notes at the same time.
And Aunt Maria would say that she would not allow the children to standround and hear such language.
At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed again, and put the pointof the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his righthand. And, with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop thehammer, with a yell, on somebody's toes.
Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going tohammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he'd let her know in time, so thatshe could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother whileit was being done.
"Oh! you women, you make such a fuss over everything," Uncle Podger wouldreply, picking himself up. "Why, I _like_ doing a little job of thissort."
[Picture: Uncle Podger admiring his work]
And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow, the nailwould go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it, andUncle Podger be precipitated against the wall with force nearlysufficient to flatten his nose.
Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole wasmade; and, about midnight, the picture would be up--very crooked andinsecure, the wall for yards round looking as if it had been smootheddown with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched--except UnclePodger.
"There you are," he would say, stepping heavily off the chair on to thecharwoman'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 likethat!"
Harris will be just that sort of man when he grows up, I know, and I toldhim so. I said I could not permit him to take so much labour uponhimself. I said:
"No; _you_ get the paper, and the pencil, and the catalogue, and Georgewrite down, and I'll do the work."
The first list we made out had to be discarded. It was clear that theupper reaches of the Thames would not allow of the navigation of a boatsufficiently 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 thethings we could do with, but only of the things that we can't dowithout."
George comes out really quite sensible at times. You'd be surprised. Icall that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, butwith reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How manypeople, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger ofswamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to thepleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only uselesslumber.
How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and bighouses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do notcare twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for;with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities andfashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with--oh, heaviest, maddestlumber of all!--the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuriesthat only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like thecriminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching headthat wears it!
It is lumber, man--all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat soheavy to pull, you n
early faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersomeand dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxietyand care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness--no time towatch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or theglittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the greattrees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods allgreen and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-wavingrushes, 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 withonly what you need--a homely home and simple pleasures, one or twofriends, 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 littlemore 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 liableto upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plainmerchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as towork. Time to drink in life's sunshine--time to listen to the AEolianmusic that the wind of God draws from the human heart-strings aroundus--time to--
I beg your pardon, really. I quite forgot.
Well, we left the list to George, and he began it.
[Picture: Tent] "We won't take a tent," suggested George; "we will have aboat 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 youhave 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, fromstem to stern, and it converts the boat into a sort of little house, andit is beautifully cosy, though a trifle stuffy; but there, everything hasits drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they camedown 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, sometooth-powder, some shaving tackle (sounds like a French exercise, doesn'tit?), and a couple of big-towels for bathing. I notice that peoplealways make gigantic arrangements for bathing when they are goinganywhere near the water, but that they don't bathe much when they arethere.
[Picture: Sea-side scene] It is the same when you go to the sea-side. Ialways determine--when thinking over the matter in London--that I'll getup early every morning, and go and have a dip before breakfast, and Ireligiously pack up a pair of drawers and a bath towel. I always get redbathing drawers. I rather fancy myself in red drawers. They suit mycomplexion so. But when I get to the sea I don't feel somehow that Iwant 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 lastmoment, and then come down and have my breakfast. Once or twice virtuehas triumphed, and I have got out at six and half-dressed myself, andhave taken my drawers and towel, and stumbled dismally off. But Ihaven'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 pickout all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and theysharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so thatI can't see them, and they take the sea and put it two miles out, so thatI have to huddle myself up in my arms and hop, shivering, through sixinches of water. And when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quiteinsulting.
One huge wave catches me up and chucks me in a sitting posture, as hardas 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 comesback and carries me out to mid-ocean. I begin to strike out franticallyfor the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see home and friends again, andwish I'd been kinder to my little sister when a boy (when I was a boy, Imean). Just when I have given up all hope, a wave retires and leaves mesprawling like a star-fish on the sand, and I get up and look back andfind that I've been swimming for my life in two feet of water. I hopback 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 longswim every morning.
George said it was so pleasant to wake up in the boat in the freshmorning, and plunge into the limpid river. Harris said there was nothinglike a swim before breakfast to give you an appetite. He said it alwaysgave him an appetite. George said that if it was going to make Harriseat more than Harris ordinarily ate, then he should protest againstHarris having a bath at all.
He said there would be quite enough hard work in towing sufficient foodfor Harris up against stream, as it was.
I urged upon George, however, how much pleasanter it would be to haveHarris clean and fresh about the boat, even if we did have to take a fewmore hundredweight of provisions; and he got to see it in my light, andwithdrew his opposition to Harris's bath.
Agreed, finally, that we should take _three_ bath towels, so as not tokeep each other waiting.
For clothes, George said two suits of flannel would be sufficient, as wecould wash them ourselves, in the river, when they got dirty. We askedhim 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 itwas easy enough;" and Harris and I were weak enough to fancy he knew whathe was talking about, and that three respectable young men, withoutposition or influence, and with no experience in washing, could reallyclean their own shirts and trousers in the river Thames with a bit ofsoap.
We were to learn in the days to come, when it was too late, that Georgewas a miserable impostor, who could evidently have known nothing whateverabout the matter. If you had seen these clothes after--but, as theshilling shockers say, we anticipate.
George impressed upon us to take a change of under-things and plenty ofsocks, in case we got upset and wanted a change; also plenty ofhandkerchiefs, as they would do to wipe things, and a pair of leatherboots as well as our boating shoes, as we should want them if we gotupset.