Idle Ideas in 1905Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
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Idle Ideas in 1905
Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
English essays; English wit and humor
I have seen a good deal of trouble in my life, but never one yet that did
not have an Italian image-vendor somehow or other mixed up in it. Where
these boys hide in times of peace is a mystery. The chance of being
upset brings them out as sunshine brings out flies. The motor cycle had
dashed into a little milk-cart and had spread it out neatly in the middle
of the tram lines. The tram traffic looked like being stopped for a
quarter of an hour; but the idea of every approaching tram driver
appeared to be that if he rang his bell with sufficient vigor this
seeming obstruction would fade away and disappear.
In an English town all this would not have attracted much attention.
Somebody would have explained that a dog was the original cause, and the
whole series of events would have appeared ordinary and natural. Upon
these foreigners the fear descended that the Almighty, for some reason,
was angry with them. A policeman ran to catch the dog.
The delighted dog rushed backwards, barking furiously, and tried to throw
up paving stones with its hind legs. That frightened a nursemaid who was
wheeling a perambulator, and then it was that I entered into the
proceedings. Seated on the edge of the pavement, with a perambulator on
one side of me and a howling baby on the other, I told that dog what I
thought of him.
Forgetful that I was in a foreign land—that he might not understand me—I
told it him in English, I told it him at length, I told it very loud and
clear. He stood a yard in front of me, listening to me with an
expression of ecstatic joy I have never before or since seen equalled on
any face, human or canine. He drank it in as though it had been music
from Paradise.
“Where have I heard that song before?” he seemed to be saying to himself,
“the old familiar language they used to talk to me when I was young?”
He approached nearer to me; there were almost tears in his eyes when I
had finished.
“Say it again!” he seemed to be asking of me. “Oh! say it all over
again, the dear old English oaths and curses that in this God-forsaken
land I never hoped to hear again.”
I learnt from the young lady that he was an English-born fox-terrier.
That explained everything. The foreign dog does not do this sort of
thing. The foreigner is born good: that is why we hate him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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