Three men on the bummelJerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
General
Three men on the bummel
Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
Bicycle touring -- Fiction; Black Forest (Germany) -- Fiction; British -- Germany -- Fiction; Humorous stories
I asked what a man was supposed to do in Germany when woke up night after
night by cats, and he explained that I could lodge an information against
the owner of the cat, when the police would proceed to caution him, and,
if necessary, order the cat to be destroyed. Who was going to destroy
the cat, and what the cat would be doing during the process, he did not
explain.
I asked him how he proposed I should discover the owner of the cat. He
thought for a while, and then suggested that I might follow it home. I
did not feel inclined to argue with him any more after that; I should
only have said things that would have made the matter worse. As it was,
that night's sport cost me twelve marks; and not a single one of the four
German officials who interviewed me on the subject could see anything
ridiculous in the proceedings from beginning to end.
But in Germany most human faults and follies sink into comparative
insignificance beside the enormity of walking on the grass. Nowhere, and
under no circumstances, may you at any time in Germany walk on the grass.
Grass in Germany is quite a fetish. To put your foot on German grass
would be as great a sacrilege as to dance a hornpipe on a Mohammedan's
praying-mat. The very dogs respect German grass; no German dog would
dream of putting a paw on it. If you see a dog scampering across the
grass in Germany, you may know for certain that it is the dog of some
unholy foreigner. In England, when we want to keep dogs out of places,
we put up wire netting, six feet high, supported by buttresses, and
defended on the top by spikes. In Germany, they put a notice-board in
the middle of the place, "Hunden verboten," and a dog that has German
blood in its veins looks at that notice-board and walks away. In a
German park I have seen a gardener step gingerly with felt boots on to
grass-plot, and removing therefrom a beetle, place it gravely but firmly
on the gravel; which done, he stood sternly watching the beetle, to see
that it did not try to get back on the grass; and the beetle, looking
utterly ashamed of itself, walked hurriedly down the gutter, and turned
up the path marked "Ausgang."
In German parks separate roads are devoted to the different orders of the
community, and no one person, at peril of liberty and fortune, may go
upon another person's road. There are special paths for "wheel-riders"
and special paths for "foot-goers," avenues for "horse-riders," roads for
people in light vehicles, and roads for people in heavy vehicles; ways
for children and for "alone ladies." That no particular route has yet
been set aside for bald-headed men or "new women" has always struck me as
an omission.
In the Grosse Garten in Dresden I once came across an old lady, standing,
helpless and bewildered, in the centre of seven tracks. Each was guarded
by a threatening notice, warning everybody off it but the person for whom
it was intended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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