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Project Gutenberg's Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, by Jerome K. Jerome This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no  ‎PREFACE · ‎ON BEING IDLE. · ‎ON GETTING ON IN THE · ‎ON THE WEATHER.
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We've been two hours already! Done literally nothing, and I meant to have done so much. I must go to Madame Jannaway's.

THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

Have you got my purse, dear? Oh, it's all right, I've got it. I'm sure I don't know what I do want now. I had made up my mind a minute ago, and now it's all gone again, oh yes, I remember, the red. Yes, I'll have the red. No, I don't mean the red, I mean the grey. Oh, so I was, you're quite right. That's the worst of shopping.

Do you know I get quite confused sometimes. Yes, yes, I shan't do any better, shall I, dear? What do you think? You haven't got any other shades of red, have you? This is such an ugly red. The shopman reminds her that she has seen all the other reds, and that this is the particular shade she selected and admired.

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow [1]

Oh, very well, she replies, with the air of one from whom all earthly cares are falling, I must take that then, I suppose. I can't be worried about it any longer. I've wasted half the morning already.


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Outside she recollects three insuperable objections to the red, and four unanswerable arguments why she should have selected the grey. She wonders would they change it, if she went back and asked to see the shopwalker? Her friend, who wants her lunch, thinks not. We laugh at her, but are we so very much better?

Come, my superior male friend, have you never stood, amid your wardrobe, undecided whether, in her eyes, you would appear more imposing, clad in the rough tweed suit that so admirably displays your broad shoulders; or in the orthodox black frock, that, after all, is perhaps more suitable to the figure of a man approaching, let us say, the nine-and-twenties?

Or, better still, why not riding costume? Did we not hear her say how well Jones looked in his top-boots and breeches, and, hang it all, we have a better leg than Jones. What a pity riding-breeches are made so baggy nowadays. Why is it that male fashions tend more and more to hide the male leg? As women have become less and less ashamed of theirs, we have become more and more reticent of ours. Why are the silken hose, the tight-fitting pantaloons, the neat kneebreeches of our forefathers impossible to-day?

Are we grown more modest or has there come about a falling off, rendering concealment advisable? I can never understand, myself, why women love us. It must be our honest worth, our sterling merit, that attracts them, certainly not our appearance, in a pair of tweed dittos, black angora coat and vest, stand-up collar, and chimney-pot hat!

No, it must be our sheer force of character that compels their admiration. What a good time our ancestors must have had was borne in upon me when, on one occasion, I appeared in character at a fancy dress ball. What I represented I am unable to say, and I don't particularly care.

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I only know it was something military. I also remember that the costume was two sizes too small for me in the chest, and thereabouts; and three sizes too large for me in the hat. I padded the hat, and dined in the middle of the day off a chop and half a glass of soda-water. I have gained prizes as a boy for mathematics, also for scripture history, not often, but I have done it.

A literary critic, now dead, once praised a book of mine. I know there have been occasions when my conduct has won the approbation of good men; but never, never in my whole life, have I felt more proud, more satisfied with myself than on that evening when, the last hook fastened, I gazed at my full-length Self in the cheval glass.

I was a dream. I say it who should not; but I am not the only one who said it. I was a glittering dream. The groundwork was red, trimmed with gold braid wherever there was room for gold braid; and where there was no more possible room for gold braid there hung gold cords, and tassels, and straps. Gold buttons and buckles fastened me, gold embroidered belts and sashes caressed me, white horse-hair plumes waved o'er me.

I am not sure that everything was in its proper place, but I managed to get everything on somehow, and I looked well. It suited me. My success was a revelation to me of female human nature. Girls who had hitherto been cold and distant gathered round me, timidly solicitous of notice. Girls on whom I smiled lost their heads and gave themselves airs. Girls who were not introduced to me sulked and were rude to girls that had been. For one poor child, with whom I sat out two dances at least she sat, while I stood gracefully beside her, I had been advised, by the costumier, NOT to sit , I was sorry.

He was a worthy young fellow, the son of a cotton broker, and he would have made her a good husband, I feel sure. But he was foolish to come as a beer-bottle. Perhaps, after all, it is as well those old fashions have gone out.

Idle thoughts of an idle fellow

A week in that suit might have impaired my natural modesty. One wonders that fancy dress balls are not more popular in this grey age of ours. The childish instinct to dress up, to make believe, is with us all. We grow so tired of being always ourselves. A tea-table discussion, at which I once assisted, fell into this: Would any one of us, when it came to the point, change with anybody else, the poor man with the millionaire, the governess with the princess, change not only outward circumstances and surroundings, but health and temperament, heart, brain, and soul; so that not one mental or physical particle of one's original self one would retain, save only memory?

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The general opinion was that we would not, but one lady maintained the affirmative. Yes, I would, persisted the first lady; I am tired of myself. I'd even be you, for a change. In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was -. What sort of man shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks oneself this question; at thirty-nine we say, I wish Fate hadn't made me this sort of man. In those days I was a reader of much well-meant advice to young men, and I gathered that, whether I should become a Sir Lancelot, a Herr Teufelsdrockh, or an Iago was a matter for my own individual choice.

Whether I should go through life gaily or gravely was a question the pros and cons of which I carefully considered. For patterns I turned to books. Byron was then still popular, and many of us made up our minds to be gloomy, saturnine young men, weary with the world, and prone to soliloquy. I determined to join them. For a month I rarely smiled, or, when I did, it was with a weary, bitter smile, concealing a broken heart at least that was the intention.

Review: Jerome K Jerome's Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow | Books | The Guardian

Shallow-minded observers misunderstood. I know exactly how it feels, they would say, looking at me sympathetically, I often have it myself. It's the sudden change in the weather, I think; and they would press neat brandy upon me, and suggest ginger. Again, it is distressing to the young man, busy burying his secret sorrow under a mound of silence, to be slapped on the back by commonplace people and asked Well, how's 'the hump' this morning?