Three Men in a Boat (Illustrated)

by Jerome K. Jerome

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, 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 little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

There is nothing does irritate me more than seeing other people sitting about doing nothing when I’m working.

My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I’m travelling, and makes my life a misery.

It seems to be the rule of this world. Each person has what he doesn’t want, and other people have what he does want.

as for French irregular verbs there was simply no keeping him away from them.

We are creatures of the sun, we men and women. We love light and life. That is why we crowd into the towns and cities, and the country grows more and more deserted every year. In the sunlight—in the daytime, when Nature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hill-sides and the deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth has gone to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome, and we get frightened, like children in a silent house. Then we sit and sob, and long for the gas-lit streets, and the sound of human voices, and the answering throb of human life. We feel so helpless and so little in the great stillness, when the dark trees rustle in the night-wind. There are so many ghosts about, and their silent sighs make us feel so sad. Let us gather together in the great cities, and light huge bonfires of a million gas-jets, and shout and sing together, and feel brave.

For once in a way, we men are able to show our taste in colours, and I think we come out very natty, if you ask me. I always like a little red in my things—red and black.

So me.

It must be disheartening work learning a musical instrument. You would think that Society, for its own sake, would do all it could to assist a man to acquire the art of playing a musical instrument. But it doesn’t!