The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow

J >> Jerome K. Jerome >> The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow

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"How is it that I can never get an answer when I ring? Here have I
been ringing for the last half-hour. I have rung twenty times."
(This is a falsehood. You have rung only six times, and the
"half-hour" is an absurd exaggeration; but you feel the mere truth
would not be adequate to the occasion.) "I think it disgraceful,"
you continue, "and I shall complain to the Company. What is the use
of my having a telephone if I can't get any answer when I ring?
Here I pay a large sum for having this thing, and I can't get any
notice taken. I've been ringing all the morning. Why is it?"

Then you wait for the answer.

"What--what do you say? I can't hear what you say."

"I say I've been ringing here for over an hour, and I can't get any
reply," you call back. "I shall complain to the Company."

"You want what? Don't stand so near the tube. I can't hear what
you say. What number?"

"Bother the number; I say why is it I don't get an answer when I
ring?"

"Eight hundred and what?"

You can't argue any more, after that. The machine would give way
under the language you want to make use of. Half of what you feel
would probably cause an explosion at some point where the wire was
weak. Indeed, mere language of any kind would fall short of the
requirements of the case. A hatchet and a gun are the only
intermediaries through which you could convey your meaning by this
time. So you give up all attempt to answer back, and meekly mention
that you want to be put in communication with four-five-seven-six.

"Four-nine-seven-six?" says the girl.

"No; four-five-seven-six."

"Did you say seven-six or six-seven?"

"Six-seven--no! I mean seven-six: no--wait a minute. I don't know
what I do mean now."

"Well, I wish you'd find out," says the young lady severely. "You
are keeping me here all the morning."

So you look up the number in the book again, and at last she tells
you that you are in connection; and then, ramming the trumpet tight
against your ear, you stand waiting.

And if there is one thing more than another likely to make a man
feel ridiculous it is standing on tip-toe in a corner, holding a
machine to his head, and listening intently to nothing. Your back
aches and your head aches, your very hair aches. You hear the door
open behind you and somebody enter the room. You can't turn your
head. You swear at them, and hear the door close with a bang. It
immediately occurs to you that in all probability it was Henrietta.
She promised to call for you at half-past twelve: you were to take
her to lunch. It was twelve o'clock when you were fool enough to
mix yourself up with this infernal machine, and it probably is
half-past twelve by now. Your past life rises before you,
accompanied by dim memories of your grandmother. You are wondering
how much longer you can bear the strain of this attitude, and
whether after all you do really want to see the man in the next
street but two, when the girl in the exchange-room calls up to know
if you're done.

"Done!" you retort bitterly; "why, I haven't begun yet."

"Well, be quick," she says, "because you're wasting time."

Thus admonished, you attack the thing again. "ARE you there?" you
cry in tones that ought to move the heart of a Charity Commissioner;
and then, oh joy! oh rapture! you hear a faint human voice replying-
-

"Yes, what is it?"

"Oh! Are you four-five-seven-six?"

"What?"

"Are you four-five-seven-six, Williamson?"

"What! who are you?"

"Eight-one-nine, Jones."

"Bones?"

"No, JONES. Are you four-five-seven-six?"

"Yes; what is it?"

"Is Mr. Williamson in?"

"Will I what--who are you?"

"Jones! Is Mr. Williamson in?"

"Who?"

"Williamson. Will-i-am-son!"

"You're the son of what? I can't hear what you say."

Then you gather yourself for one final effort, and succeed, by
superhuman patience, in getting the fool to understand that you wish
to know if Mr. Williamson is in, and he says, so it sounds to you,
"Be in all the morning."

So you snatch up your hat and run round.

"Oh, I've come to see Mr. Williamson," you say.

"Very sorry, sir," is the polite reply, "but he's out."

"Out? Why, you just now told me through the telephone that he'd be
in all the morning."

"No, I said, he 'WON'T be in all the morning.'"

You go back to the office, and sit down in front of that telephone
and look at it. There it hangs, calm and imperturbable. Were it an
ordinary instrument, that would be its last hour. You would go
straight down-stairs, get the coal-hammer and the kitchen-poker, and
divide it into sufficient pieces to give a bit to every man in
London. But you feel nervous of these electrical affairs, and there
is a something about that telephone, with its black hole and curly
wires, that cows you. You have a notion that if you don't handle it
properly something may come and shock you, and then there will be an
inquest, and bother of that sort, so you only curse it.

That is what happens when you want to use the telephone from your
end. But that is not the worst that the telephone can do. A
sensible man, after a little experience, can learn to leave the
thing alone. Your worst troubles are not of your own making. You
are working against time; you have given instructions not to be
disturbed. Perhaps it is after lunch, and you are thinking with
your eyes closed, so that your thoughts shall not be distracted by
the objects about the room. In either case you are anxious not to
leave your chair, when off goes that telephone bell and you spring
from your chair, uncertain, for the moment, whether you have been
shot, or blown up with dynamite. It occurs to you in your weakness
that if you persist in taking no notice, they will get tired, and
leave you alone. But that is not their method. The bell rings
violently at ten-second intervals. You have nothing to wrap your
head up in. You think it will be better to get this business over
and done with. You go to your fate and call back savagely--

"What is it? What do you want?"

No answer, only a confused murmur, prominent out of which come the
voices of two men swearing at one another. The language they are
making use of is disgraceful. The telephone seems peculiarly
adapted for the conveyance of blasphemy. Ordinary language sounds
indistinct through it; but every word those two men are saying can
be heard by all the telephone subscribers in London.

It is useless attempting to listen till they have done. When they
are exhausted, you apply to the tube again. No answer is
obtainable. You get mad, and become sarcastic; only being sarcastic
when you are not sure that anybody is at the other end to hear you
is unsatisfying.

At last, after a quarter of an hour or so of saying, "Are you
there?" "Yes, I'm here," "Well?" the young lady at the Exchange
asks what you want.

"I don't want anything," you reply.

"Then why do you keep talking?" she retorts; "you mustn't play with
the thing."

This renders you speechless with indignation for a while, upon
recovering from which you explain that somebody rang you up.

"WHO rang you up?" she asks.

"I don't know."

"I wish you did," she observes.

Generally disgusted, you slam the trumpet up and return to your
chair. The instant you are seated the bell clangs again; and you
fly up and demand to know what the thunder they want, and who the
thunder they are.

"Don't speak so loud, we can't hear you. What do you want?" is the
answer.

"I don't want anything. What do you want? Why do you ring me up,
and then not answer me? Do leave me alone, if you can!"

"We can't get Hong Kongs at seventy-four."

"Well, I don't care if you can't."

"Would you like Zulus?"

"What are you talking about?" you reply; "I don't know what you
mean."

"Would you like Zulus--Zulus at seventy-three and a half?"

"I wouldn't have 'em at six a penny. What are you talking about?"

"Hong Kongs--we can't get them at seventy-four. Oh, half-a-minute"
(the half-a-minute passes). "Are you there?"

"Yes, but you are talking to the wrong man."

"We can get you Hong Kongs at seventy-four and seven-eights."

"Bother Hong Kongs, and you too. I tell you, you are talking to the
wrong man. I've told you once."

"Once what?"

"Why, that I am the wrong man--I mean that you are talking to the
wrong man."

"Who are you?"

"Eight-one-nine, Jones."

"Oh, aren't you one-nine-eight?"

"No."

"Oh, good-bye."

"Good-bye."

How can a man after that sit down and write pleasantly of the
European crisis? And, if it were needed, herein lies another
indictment against the telephone. I was engaged in an argument,
which, if not in itself serious, was at least concerned with a
serious enough subject, the unsatisfactory nature of human riches;
and from that highly moral discussion have I been lured, by the
accidental sight of the word "telephone," into the writing of matter
which can have the effect only of exciting to frenzy all critics of
the New Humour into whose hands, for their sins, this book may come.
Let me forget my transgression and return to my sermon, or rather to
the sermon of my millionaire acquaintance.

It was one day after dinner, we sat together in his magnificently
furnished dining-room. We had lighted our cigars at the silver
lamp. The butler had withdrawn.

"These cigars we are smoking," my friend suddenly remarked, a propos
apparently of nothing, "they cost me five shillings apiece, taking
them by the thousand."

"I can quite believe it," I answered; "they are worth it."

"Yes, to you," he replied, almost savagely. "What do you usually
pay for your cigars?"

We had known each other years ago. When I first met him his offices
consisted of a back room up three flights of stairs in a dingy by-
street off the Strand, which has since disappeared. We occasionally
dined together, in those days, at a restaurant in Great Portland
Street, for one and nine. Our acquaintanceship was of sufficient
standing to allow of such a question.

"Threepence," I answered. "They work out at about twopence
three-farthings by the box."

"Just so," he growled; "and your twopenny-three-farthing weed gives
you precisely the same amount of satisfaction that this five
shilling cigar affords me. That means four and ninepence farthing
wasted every time I smoke. I pay my cook two hundred a year. I
don't enjoy my dinner as much as when it cost me four shillings,
including a quarter flask of Chianti. What is the difference,
personally, to me whether I drive to my office in a carriage and
pair, or in an omnibus? I often do ride in a bus: it saves
trouble. It is absurd wasting time looking for one's coachman, when
the conductor of an omnibus that passes one's door is hailing one a
few yards off. Before I could afford even buses--when I used to
walk every morning to the office from Hammersmith--I was healthier.
It irritates me to think how hard I work for no earthly benefit to
myself. My money pleases a lot of people I don't care two straws
about, and who are only my friends in the hope of making something
out of me. If I could eat a hundred-guinea dinner myself every
night, and enjoy it four hundred times as much as I used to enjoy a
five-shilling dinner, there would be some sense in it. Why do I do
it?"

I had never heard him talk like this before. In his excitement he
rose from the table, and commenced pacing the room.

"Why don't I invest my money in the two and a half per cents?" he
continued. "At the very worst I should be safe for five thousand a
year. What, in the name of common sense, does a man want with more?
I am always saying to myself, I'll do it; why don't I?

"Well, why not?" I echoed.

"That's what I want you to tell me," he returned. "You set up for
understanding human nature, it's a mystery to me. In my place, you
would do as I do; you know that. If somebody left you a hundred
thousand pounds to-morrow, you would start a newspaper, or build a
theatre--some damn-fool trick for getting rid of the money and
giving yourself seventeen hours' anxiety a day; you know you would."

I hung my head in shame. I felt the justice of the accusation. It
has always been my dream to run a newspaper and own a theatre.

"If we worked only for what we could spend," he went on, "the City
might put up its shutters to-morrow morning. What I want to get at
the bottom of is this instinct that drives us to work apparently for
work's own sake. What is this strange thing that gets upon our back
and spurs us?"

A servant entered at that moment with a cablegram from the manager
of one of his Austrian mines, and he had to leave me for his study.
But, walking home, I fell to pondering on his words. WHY this
endless work? Why each morning do we get up and wash and dress
ourselves, to undress ourselves at night and go to bed again? Why
do we work merely to earn money to buy food; and eat food so as to
gain strength that we may work? Why do we live, merely in the end
to say good-bye to one another? Why do we labour to bring children
into the world that they may die and be buried?

Of what use our mad striving, our passionate desire? Will it matter
to the ages whether, once upon a time, the Union Jack or the
Tricolour floated over the battlements of Badajoz? Yet we poured
our blood into its ditches to decide the question. Will it matter,
in the days when the glacial period shall have come again, to clothe
the earth with silence, whose foot first trod the Pole? Yet,
generation after generation, we mile its roadway with our whitening
bones. So very soon the worms come to us; does it matter whether we
love, or hate? Yet the hot blood rushes through our veins, we wear
out heart and brain for shadowy hopes that ever fade as we press
forward.

The flower struggles up from seed-pod, draws the sweet sap from the
ground, folds its petals each night, and sleeps. Then love comes to
it in a strange form, and it longs to mingle its pollen with the
pollen of some other flower. So it puts forth its gay blossoms, and
the wandering insect bears the message from seed-pod to seed-pod.
And the seasons pass, bringing with them the sunshine and the rain,
till the flower withers, never having known the real purpose for
which it lived, thinking the garden was made for it, not it for the
garden. The coral insect dreams in its small soul, which is
possibly its small stomach, of home and food. So it works and
strives deep down in the dark waters, never knowing of the
continents it is fashioning.

But the question still remains: for what purpose is it all?
Science explains it to us. By ages of strife and effort we improve
the race; from ether, through the monkey, man is born. So, through
the labour of the coming ages, he will free himself still further
from the brute. Through sorrow and through struggle, by the sweat
of brain and brow, he will lift himself towards the angels. He will
come into his kingdom.

But why the building? Why the passing of the countless ages? Why
should he not have been born the god he is to be, imbued at birth
with all the capabilities his ancestors have died acquiring? Why
the Pict and Hun that _I_ may be? Why _I_, that a descendant of my
own, to whom I shall seem a savage, shall come after me? Why, if
the universe be ordered by a Creator to whom all things are
possible, the protoplasmic cell? Why not the man that is to be?
Shall all the generations be so much human waste that he may live?
Am I but another layer of the soil preparing for him?

Or, if our future be in other spheres, then why the need of this
planet? Are we labouring at some Work too vast for us to perceive?
Are our passions and desires mere whips and traces by the help of
which we are driven? Any theory seems more hopeful than the thought
that all our eager, fretful lives are but the turning of a useless
prison crank. Looking back the little distance that our dim eyes
can penetrate the past, what do we find? Civilizations, built up
with infinite care, swept aside and lost. Beliefs for which men
lived and died, proved to be mockeries. Greek Art crushed to the
dust by Gothic bludgeons. Dreams of fraternity, drowned in blood by
a Napoleon. What is left to us, but the hope that the work itself,
not the result, is the real monument? Maybe, we are as children,
asking, "Of what use are these lessons? What good will they ever be
to us?" But there comes a day when the lad understands why he
learnt grammar and geography, when even dates have a meaning for
him. But this is not until he has left school, and gone out into
the wider world. So, perhaps, when we are a little more grown up,
we too may begin to understand the reason for our living.

ON THE CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN

I talked to a woman once on the subject of honeymoons. I said,
"Would you recommend a long honeymoon, or a Saturday to Monday
somewhere?" A silence fell upon her. I gathered she was looking
back rather than forward to her answer.

"I would advise a long honeymoon," she replied at length, "the
old-fashioned month."

"Why," I persisted, "I thought the tendency of the age was to cut
these things shorter and shorter."

"It is the tendency of the age," she answered, "to seek escape from
many things it would be wiser to face. I think myself that, for
good or evil, the sooner it is over--the sooner both the man and the
woman know--the better."

"The sooner what is over?" I asked.

If she had a fault, this woman, about which I am not sure, it was an
inclination towards enigma.

She crossed to the window and stood there, looking out.

"Was there not a custom," she said, still gazing down into the wet,
glistening street, "among one of the ancient peoples, I forget
which, ordaining that when a man and woman, loving one another, or
thinking that they loved, had been joined together, they should go
down upon their wedding night to the temple? And into the dark
recesses of the temple, through many winding passages, the priest
led them until they came to the great chamber where dwelt the voice
of their god. There the priest left them, clanging-to the massive
door behind him, and there, alone in silence, they made their
sacrifice; and in the night the Voice spoke to them, showing them
their future life--whether they had chosen well; whether their love
would live or die. And in the morning the priest returned and led
them back into the day; and they dwelt among their fellows. But no
one was permitted to question them, nor they to answer should any do
so. Well, do you know, our nineteenth-century honeymoon at
Brighton, Switzerland, or Ramsgate, as the choice or necessity may
be, always seems to me merely another form of that night spent alone
in the temple before the altar of that forgotten god. Our young men
and women marry, and we kiss them and congratulate them; and,
standing on the doorstep, throw rice and old slippers, and shout
good wishes after them; and he waves his gloved hand to us, and she
flutters her little handkerchief from the carriage window; and we
watch their smiling faces and hear their laughter until the corner
hides them from our view. Then we go about our own business, and a
short time passes by; and one day we meet them again, and their
faces have grown older and graver; and I always wonder what the
Voice has told them during that little while that they have been
absent from our sight. But of course it would not do to ask them.
Nor would they answer truly if we did."

My friend laughed, and, leaving the window, took her place beside
the tea-things, and other callers dropping in, we fell to talk of
pictures, plays, and people.

But I felt it would be unwise to act on her sole advice, much as I
have always valued her opinion.

A woman takes life too seriously. It is a serious affair to most of
us, the Lord knows. That is why it is well not to take it more
seriously than need be.

Little Jack and little Jill fall down the hill, hurting their little
knees, and their little noses, spilling the hard-earned water. We
are very philosophical.

"Oh, don't cry!" we tell them, "that is babyish. Little boys and
little girls must learn to bear pain. Up you get, fill the pail
again, and try once more."

Little Jack and little Jill rub their dirty knuckles into their
little eyes, looking ruefully at their bloody little knees, and trot
back with the pail. We laugh at them, but not ill-naturedly.

"Poor little souls," we say; "how they did hullabaloo. One might
have thought they were half-killed. And it was only a broken crown,
after all. What a fuss children make!" We bear with much stoicism
the fall of little Jack and little Jill.

But when WE--grown-up Jack with moustache turning grey; grown-up
Jill with the first faint "crow's feet" showing--when WE tumble down
the hill, and OUR pail is spilt. Ye Heavens! what a tragedy has
happened. Put out the stars, turn off the sun, suspend the laws of
nature. Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jill, coming down the hill--what they
were doing on the hill we will not inquire--have slipped over a
stone, placed there surely by the evil powers of the universe. Mr.
Jack and Mrs. Jill have bumped their silly heads. Mr. Jack and Mrs.
Jill have hurt their little hearts, and stand marvelling that the
world can go about its business in the face of such disaster.

Don't take the matter quite so seriously, Jack and Jill. You have
spilled your happiness, you must toil up the hill again and refill
the pail. Carry it more carefully next time. What were you doing?
Playing some fool's trick, I'll be bound.

A laugh and a sigh, a kiss and good-bye, is our life. Is it worth
so much fretting? It is a merry life on the whole. Courage,
comrade. A campaign cannot be all drum and fife and stirrup-cup.
The marching and the fighting must come into it somewhere. There
are pleasant bivouacs among the vineyards, merry nights around the
camp fires. White hands wave a welcome to us; bright eyes dim at
our going. Would you run from the battle-music? What have you to
complain of? Forward: the medal to some, the surgeon's knife to
others; to all of us, sooner or later, six feet of mother earth.
What are you afraid of? Courage, comrade.

There is a mean between basking through life with the smiling
contentment of the alligator, and shivering through it with the
aggressive sensibility of the Lama determined to die at every cross
word. To bear it as a man we must also feel it as a man. My
philosophic friend, seek not to comfort a brother standing by the
coffin of his child with the cheery suggestion that it will be all
the same a hundred years hence, because, for one thing, the
observation is not true: the man is changed for all eternity--
possibly for the better, but don't add that. A soldier with a
bullet in his neck is never quite the man he was. But he can laugh
and he can talk, drink his wine and ride his horse. Now and again,
towards evening, when the weather is trying, the sickness will come
upon him. You will find him on a couch in a dark corner.

"Hallo! old fellow, anything up?"

"Oh, just a twinge, the old wound, you know. I will be better in a
little while."

Shut the door of the dark room quietly. I should not stay even to
sympathize with him if I were you. The men will be coming to screw
the coffin down soon. I think he would like to be alone with it
till then. Let us leave him. He will come back to the club later
on in the season. For a while we may have to give him another ten
points or so, but he will soon get back his old form. Now and
again, when he meets the other fellows' boys shouting on the
towing-path; when Brown rushes up the drive, paper in hand, to tell
him how that young scapegrace Jim has won his Cross; when he is
congratulating Jones's eldest on having passed with honours, the old
wound may give him a nasty twinge. But the pain will pass away. He
will laugh at our stories and tell us his own; eat his dinner, play
his rubber. It is only a wound.

Tommy can never be ours, Jenny does not love us. We cannot afford
claret, so we will have to drink beer. Well, what would you have us
do? Yes, let us curse Fate by all means--some one to curse is
always useful. Let us cry and wring our hands--for how long? The
dinner-bell will ring soon, and the Smiths are coming. We shall
have to talk about the opera and the picture-galleries. Quick,
where is the eau-de-Cologne? where are the curling-tongs? Or would
you we committed suicide? Is it worth while? Only a few more
years--perhaps to-morrow, by aid of a piece of orange peel or a
broken chimney-pot--and Fate will save us all that trouble.

Or shall we, as sulky children, mope day after day? We are a
broken-hearted little Jack--little Jill. We will never smile again;
we will pine away and die, and be buried in the spring. The world
is sad, and life so cruel, and heaven so cold. Oh dear! oh dear! we
have hurt ourselves.

We whimper and whine at every pain. In old strong days men faced
real dangers, real troubles every hour; they had no time to cry.
Death and disaster stood ever at the door. Men were contemptuous of
them. Now in each snug protected villa we set to work to make
wounds out of scratches. Every head-ache becomes an agony, every
heart-ache a tragedy. It took a murdered father, a drowned
sweetheart, a dishonoured mother, a ghost, and a slaughtered Prime
Minister to produce the emotions in Hamlet that a modern minor poet
obtains from a chorus girl's frown, or a temporary slump on the
Stock Exchange. Like Mrs. Gummidge, we feel it more. The lighter
and easier life gets the more seriously we go out to meet it. The
boatmen of Ulysses faced the thunder and the sunshine alike with
frolic welcome. We modern sailors have grown more sensitive. The
sunshine scorches us, the rain chills us. We meet both with loud
self-pity.

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