Sketches in Lavender, Blue and GreenJerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
General
Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green
Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
"It can't spell," he added, "and it's got a nasty, sulky temper. If it
was my spirit I'd hire another spirit to kick it."
Whibley was one of the mildest little men I ever knew, but chaff or abuse
of his Spirit roused the devil in him, and I feared we were going to have
a scene. Fortunately, I was able to get his mind back to the
consideration of "Hesturnemysfear" before anything worse happened than a
few muttered remarks about the laughter of fools, and want of reverence
for sacred subjects being the sign of a shallow mind.
We tried "He's stern," and "His turn," and the "fear of Hesturnemy," and
tried to think who "Hesturnemy" might be. Three times we went over the
whole thing again from the beginning, which meant six hundred and six
tiltings of the table, and then suddenly the explanation struck
me--"Eastern Hemisphere."
Whibley had asked it for any information it might possess concerning his
wife's uncle, from whom he had not heard for months, and that apparently
was its idea of an address.
The fame of Whibley's Spirit became noised abroad, with the result that
Whibley was able to command the willing service of more congenial
assistants, and Jobstock and myself were dismissed. But we bore no
malice.
Under these more favourable conditions the Spirit plucked up wonderfully,
and talked everybody's head off. It could never have been a cheerful
companion, however, for its conversation was chiefly confined to warnings
and prognostications of evil. About once a fortnight Whibley would drop
round on me, in a friendly way, to tell me that I was to beware of a man
who lived in a street beginning with a "C," or to inform me that if I
would go to a town on the coast where there were three churches I should
meet someone who would do me an irreparable injury, and, that I did not
rush off then and there in search of that town he regarded as flying in
the face of Providence.
In its passion for poking its ghostly nose into other people's affairs it
reminded me of my earthly friend Poppleton. Nothing pleased it better
than being appealed to for aid and advice, and Whibley, who was a perfect
slave to it, would hunt half over the parish for people in trouble and
bring them to it.
It would direct ladies, eager for divorce court evidence, to go to the
third house from the corner of the fifth street, past such and such a
church or public-house (it never would give a plain, straightforward
address), and ring the bottom bell but one twice. They would thank it
effusively, and next morning would start to find the fifth street past
the church, and would ring the bottom bell but one of the third house
from the corner twice, and a man in his shirt sleeves would come to the
door and ask them what they wanted.
They could not tell what they wanted, they did not know themselves, and
the man would use bad language, and slam the door in their faces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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