388 – Three Men in a Boat
45:00 Share

This episode of Sleepy is proudly sponsored by Shopify. If you're listening to this show and you're like me, you really prioritize a healthy lifestyle. You go out of your way to streamline your day-to-day, your money, your exercise, your morning habits, all so you can be lucid and just get to the business of living your life.

And if you actually have a business, Shopify is one of those tools that after you have it, you cannot imagine life without it. It is the business behind the business and it simply helps you run your life more smoothly. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. It is the number one checkout on the planet. Their shop pay features boost conversions to 50%, meaning way less left in the cart and more sales for you.

and it's a perfect partner no matter what stage your business is in. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. So upgrade your business and get the same checkout as some of the most successful companies in the world. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash otis, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash otis to upgrade your selling today. shopify.com slash otis.

I'll have a link for this in the description of the show. Thanks. This episode of Sleepy is proudly sponsored by HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit.

I am a really big believer in eating well to sleep well, and HelloFresh has super balanced, delicious, easy to make meals that are ideal for a healthy lifestyle and a healthy sleep cycle. You save time going to the grocery store by getting meals right to your door, you cut down on food waste with everything perfectly portioned out for you, and the recipes are just super tasty.

I personally just whipped up their herbed roast chicken over a kale and apple salad, and it was so good and so hearty and refreshing. I really look forward to opening my HelloFresh box and seeing what's in there. It's a real treat that happens to also be really affordable and sustainable, and really great for a busy lifestyle.

So get up to 10 free meals and a free high-protein item for life at HelloFresh.com slash Sleepy10FM. One item per box with active subscription. Free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. That's up to 10 free HelloFresh meals. Just go to HelloFresh.com slash Sleepy10FM. Get America's number one meal kit today. And eat well, sleep well.

I'll have a link for this in the show notes. Thanks. Hey, my name's Otis Gray, and you're listening to Sleepy, a podcast where I read old books to help you get to sleep. I hope you're having a lovely January so far. I've got a great little kind of philosophical meandering reading for you that I really enjoyed reading myself. And it's by an author that's never been on the show before. New year, new authors.

And before we get to our bedtime reading, I just want to profoundly thank all of our brand new patrons on Patreon.com, which is a great site where you can go and pledge a couple bucks for an ad-free version of Sleepy. So, this week's wonderful new patrons, Chris Boswinkle, Petra Stoll, Virginia Perota, Terry, Joanna B, Roxanne, Folksy, Maxwell Profeta, Aaron Powell, and Allie.

Thank you all so, so much for being a part of making this show. It really, really means a lot. And for anyone who doesn't know, all these names that I just read are brand new supporters of Sleepy on Patreon.com, which is a website where you can go and pledge a couple bucks for an ad-free version of the show, like I said. But generally, it's just a way to support people who make the stuff that you like directly. So...

If you would like cool perks like an ad-free version of the show or to simply just have your name read in the credits of the show, you can donate $1 for that. There's also a poetry feed for $5 a month with all kinds of readings you've never heard before. But again, regardless of how much you donate, it means a lot to me. And no matter how much, I will read your name on the show. So again, if you want to be a part of making it,

go to patreon.com slash sleepy radio. Thank you. And as always, the music you're hearing is by my good friend James Lepkowski and the cover art for Sleepy is by Gracie Kena. So tonight's story was written in 1889 and it is by Jerome K. Jerome. This is a really lovely little book about three men in a boat and it is called Three Men in a Boat.

It's actually called Three Men in a Boat, parentheses, to say nothing of the dog, because they also have a dog in the boat, who has one of the coolest names I've ever heard, Montmorency. Yeah, this is a really great little story. I really enjoyed reading it. Yeah, very philosophical and really gorgeous and meandering. Really lovely read. So, I hope tonight you can fall asleep super deeply to it. And without further ado...

Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Jerome K. Jerome. And now's the time for you to fluff up your pillow, just how you like it. Feel yourself melt into your bed, get real comfortable, close your eyes, and let me read to you. Chapter 1. There were four of us, George and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking and talking about how bad we were.

Bad from a medical point of view, I mean, of course. We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at times that he hardly knew what he was doing. And then George said that he had fits of giddiness too, and hardly knew what he was doing. With me, it was my liver that was out of order.

I knew it was my liver that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liver pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.

The diagnosis seemed in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt. I remember going to the British Museum one day to read a treatment from some slight ailment of which I had a touch. Hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book and read all I came to read, and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves and began to indolently study diseases generally.

I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into. Some fearful, devastating scourge. I know. And before I glanced half down the list of premonitory symptoms, it was borne in upon me that I'd fairly got it. I sat for a while, frozen with horror. And then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever, read the symptoms, discovered that I had typhoid fever, and must have had it for months without knowing it.

Wondered what else I had got. Turned up St. Vitus' dance. Found, as I expected, that I had that too. Began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom. And so started alphabetically, read up Aug, and learned that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease. I was relieved to find I had only in a modified form, and so far as that was concerned, I might live for years.

Cholera I had, with severe complications, and diphtheria I had seemed to have been born with. I plotted conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee. I felt rather hurt about this at first. It seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed.

I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish and determined to do without housemaid's need. Gow, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without being aware of it, and zemosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zemosis, so I concluded that there was nothing else the matter with me. I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view.

What an acquisition I should be to a class. Students would have no need to walk to hospitals if they had me. I was a hospital all in myself. All they would need to do was walk around me and after that take their diploma. Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I made it 147 to the minute.

I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time. It must have been beating, but I could not account for it. I patted myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit around each side, and a little way up the back, but I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far as it ever would go,

and I shut one eye and tried to examine it with the other. I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had scarlet fever. I had walked into that reading room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out at a crepit wreck. I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine and feels my pulse and looks at my tongue and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I'm ill. So I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now,

"'What a doctor wants,' I said, "'is practice. "'He shall have me. "'He will get more practice out of me "'than out of 1,700 of your ordinary commonplace patients "'with only one or two diseases each.' "'So I went straight up and saw him, "'and he said, "'Well, what's the matter with you?' "'I said, "'I will not take up your time. "'Dear boy, "'with telling you what is the matter with me, "'life is brief, "'then you might pass away before I had finished.'

but I will tell you what is not the matter with me. I have not got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee I cannot tell you, but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I have got. Then I told him how I came to discover it all. Then he opened me and looked down me and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it. A cowardly thing to do, I call it, and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head.

After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription and folded it up and gave it to me. I put it in my pocket and went out. I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist and handed it in. The man read it and then handed it back. He said he didn't keep it. I said, you are a chemist? He said, I am a chemist. If I was a cooperative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me. I read the prescription. It ran.

one pound beefsteak with one pound bitter beer every six hours, one ten mile walk every morning, one bet at eleven sharp every night, and don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand. I followed the directions with a happy result, speaking for myself that my life was preserved and is still going on. In the present instance, going back to the liver pill circular, I had the symptoms beyond all mistake.

the chief among them being a general disinclination to work of any kind. What I suffer, in that way, no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy, I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know that, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness. Why, you skulking little devil, you, they would say. Get up and do something for your living, can't you?

not knowing, of course, that I was ill. And they didn't give me pills. They gave me clumps on the side of the head. And, strange as it may appear, those clumps on the head often cured me, for the time being. I've known one clump on the head have more effect upon my liver and make me feel more anxious to go straight away then and there and do what was wanted to be done, without further loss of time, than a whole box of pills does now. You know, it often is so.

those simple old-fashioned remedies that are sometimes more efficacious than all the dispensary stuff. We sat there for half an hour, describing to each other our maladies. I explained to George and William Harris how I felt when I got up in the morning, and William Harris told me how he felt when he went to bed. And George stood on the hearth rock and gave us a clever and powerful piece of acting, illustrative of how he felt in the night. George fancies he is ill,

but there's never anything really the matter with them, you know. At this point, Mrs. Poppets knocked at the door to know if we were ready for supper. We smiled sadly at one another and said we supposed we had better try to swallow a bit. Harris said a little something in one stomach, often kept the disease in check, and Mrs. Poppets brought the tray in, and we drew up to the table and toyed with a little steak and onions and some rhubarb tart. I must have been very weak at the time,

"'because I know, after the first half hour or so, "'I seemed to take no interest whatever in my food. "'An unusual thing for me, and I didn't want any cheese. "'This duty done, we refilled our glasses, lit our pipes, "'and resumed the discussion upon our state of health. "'What it was, it was actually the matter with us, "'we none of us could be sure of. "'But the unanimous opinion was that it, whatever it was, "'had been brought on by overwork. "'What we want is rest,' said Harris.'

Rest in a complete change, said George. The overstrain upon our brains has produced a general depression throughout the system. Change of scene and absence of the necessity for thought will restore the mental equilibrium. George has a cousin who is usually described in the charge sheet as a medical student so that he naturally has a somewhat family physicianary way of putting things. I agreed with George and suggested that we should seek out some retired and old world spot

far from the matting crown, and dream away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes, some half-forgotten nook hidden away by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world, some quaint perched eyrie on the cliffs of time, from whence the surging waves of the 19th century would sound far off and faint. Harris said he thought it would be humpy. He said he knew the sort of place I meant, where everybody went to bed at eight o'clock, and you couldn't get a referee for love or money.

and had to walk ten miles to get your backie. No, said Harris. If you want rest and change, you can't beat a sea trip. I objected to the sea trip strongly. A sea trip does you good when you're going to have a couple months of it, but for a week, it's wicked. You start on Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an area due to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook.

Sir Francis Drake and Christopher Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a little beef tea and to sit up on deck and answer with a long, sweet smile when kind-hearted people ask you how you feel now. On Sunday, you begin to walk about again and take solid food. And on Monday morning, as with your bag and umbrella in your hand,

You stand by the gunwale, waiting to step ashore. You begin to thoroughly like it. I remember my brother-in-law going for a short sea trip once, for the benefit of his health. He took a return berth from London to Liverpool, and when he got to Liverpool, the only thing he was anxious about was to sell that return ticket. It was offered round the town at a tremendous reduction, so I am told, and was eventually sold for 18 pence.

to a bilious-looking youth who had just been advised by his medical men to go to the seaside and take exercise. Seaside, said my brother-in-law, pressing the ticket affectionately into his hand. Why, you'll have enough to last you a lifetime. And as for exercise, why, you'll get more exercise sitting down on that ship than you would turning somersaults on dry land. He himself, my brother-in-law, came back by train. He said the Northwestern Railway was healthy enough for him,

Another fellow I knew went for a week's voyage around the coast, and before they started, the steward came to him to ask whether he would pay for each meal as he had it, or arrange beforehand for the whole series. The steward recommended the latter course, as it would come so much cheaper. He said they would do him for the whole week at £2.05. He said for breakfast there would be fish, followed by a grill. Lunch was at one, and consisted of four courses.

Dinner at six, soup, fish, entree, joint, poultry, salad, sweets, cheese, and dessert, and a light meat supper at ten. My friend thought he would close on the two-pound-five job. He is a hearty eater, and did so. Lunch came just as they were off, sheerness. He didn't feel so hungry as he thought he should, and so contented himself with a bit of boiled beef and some strawberries and cream. He pondered a good deal during the afternoon.

and at one time it seemed to him that he had been eating nothing but boiled beef for weeks, and at other times it seemed that he must have been living on strawberries and cream for years. Neither the beef nor the strawberries and cream seemed happy either, seemed discontented like. At six they came and told him dinner was ready. The announcement aroused no enthusiasm within him, but he felt that there was some of the two-pound five to be worked off, and he held on to ropes and things and went down.

A pleasant odor of onions and hot ham mingled with fried fish and greens greeted him at the bottom of the ladder, and then the steward came up with an oily smile and said, "'What can I get you, sir?' "'Get me out of this,' was the feeble reply. And they ran him up quick and propped him up over the leeward and left him. For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin captain's biscuits. I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain, and soda water."

But towards Saturday he got uppish and went in for weak tea and dry toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on chicken broth. He left the ship on Tuesday, and as it steamed away from the landing stage he gazed after it regretfully. There she goes, he said. There she goes with two pounds worth of food on board that belongs to me and that I haven't had. He said that if they had given him any other day, he thought he could have put it straight. So I set my face against the seatrape.

Not as I explained, upon her own account. I was never queer, but I was afraid for George. George said he should be alright, and would rather like it, but he would advise Harris to meet me not to think of it, as he felt sure we should both be ill. Harris said that to himself. It was always a mystery how people managed to get sick at sea. Said he thought people must do it on purpose, from affectation. Said he had often wished to be, but had never been able.

Then he told us anecdotes of how he had gone across the channel when it was so rough that the passengers had to be tied to their berths, and he and the captain were the only two living souls on board who were not ill. It seems it was he and the second mate who were not ill, but it was generally he and one other man. If not he and another man, then it was he by himself. It is a curious fact, but nobody is ever seasick on land. At sea you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boatloads of them.

but I never met a man yet on land who had ever known at all what it is to be seasick. Where thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery. If most men were like a fellow I saw on the Yarmouth boat one day, I could account for the seeming enigma easily enough. It was just off the south end pier, I recollect, and he was leaning out through one of the portholes in a very dangerous position. I went up to him to try to save him.

Hi, come further in, I said, shaking him by the shoulder. You'll be overboard. Oh my, I wish I was, was the only answer I could get. And there, I had to leave him. Three weeks afterwards, I met him in the coffee room of a bath hotel, talking about his voyages and explaining with enthusiasm how he loved the sea. Good sailor, he replied in answer to a mild young man's envious query. Well, I did feel a little queer once, I confess. It was off Cape Horn.

The vessel was wrecked next morning. I said, weren't you a little shaky by South End Pier one day and wanted to be thrown overboard? South End Pier, he replied with a puzzled expression. Yes, going down to Yarmouth. Last Friday, three weeks. Ah, yes, he answered, brightening up. I remember now. I did have a headache that afternoon. It was pickles, you know. They were the most disgraceful pickles I ever tasted in a respectable boat. Did you have any?

For myself, I had discovered an excellent preventative against seasickness and balancing myself. You stand in the center of the deck, and as the ship heaves and pitches, you move your body about so as to keep it always straight. When the front of the ship rises, you lean forward till the deck almost touches your nose, and when its back end gets up, you lean backwards. This is all very well for an hour or two, but you can't balance yourself for a week. George said, Let's go up the river.

He said we should have fresh air, exercise and quiet, and constant change of scenery would occupy our minds, including what there was of Harris's, and the hard work would give us a good appetite and make us sleep well. Harris said he didn't think George ought to do anything that would have a tendency to make him sleepier than he already was, as it might be dangerous. He said he didn't very well understand how George was going to sleep any more than he did now, seeing that there were only 24 hours in each day.

summer and winter alike, but thought that if he did sleep anymore, he might as well be dead, and so save his board and lodging. Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a tea. I don't know what a tea is, except a six-penny one, which includes a bread and butter and cake adlib, and is cheap at the price, if you hadn't had any dinner. It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to its credit. It suited me to a tea, too,

and Harris and I both said it was a good idea of George's, and we said it in a tone that seemed to somehow imply that we were surprised that George should have come out so sensible. The only one who was not stuck with the suggestion was Montmorency. He never did care for the river, did Montmorency. It's all very well for you fellows, he says. You like it, but I don't. There's nothing for me to do. Scenery is not in my line, and I don't smoke. If I see a rat, you won't stop, and if I go to sleep,

you'd get fooling about with the boat and slot me overboard. If he asked me, I'd call the whole thing bodily foolishness. We were three to one, however, and the motion was carried. Chapter Two We pulled out the maps and discussed plans. We arranged to start on the following Saturday from Kingston. Harris and I would go down in the morning and take the boat up to Chirsty and George, who would not be able to get away from the city till the afternoon.

George goes to sleep at a bank from 10 to 4 each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and pull him outside at 2, would meet us there. Should we camp out, or sleep at inns? George and I were for camping out. We said it would be so wild and free, so patriarchal-like. Slowly, the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased their song.

And only the moorhen's plaintive cry and harsh croak of the corncake stirs in the odd rush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out her last. From the dim woods on either bank, night's ghostly army, the gray shadows creep out with noiselessness, tread to chase away the lingering rear guard of life, and pass with noiseless unseen feet above the waving river grass and through the sighing rushes.

At night, upon her somber throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness. Then we run our little boat into some quiet nook, and the tent is pitched, and the frugal supper cooked and eaten. Then the big pipes are filled and lightened, and the pleasant chat goes round in musical undertone, while on the pauses of our talk, the river, playing round the boat, paddles strange old tales and secrets.

Sings low, the child's song that has sung so many thousands of years, will sing so many thousands years to come, before its voice grows harsh and cold. A song that we, who have learned to love its changing face, who have so often nestled on its yielding bosom, think somehow we understand, though we could not tell you in mere words, the story that we listen to. And we sit there, by its margin, while the moon, who loves it too, stoops down to kiss it with a sister's kiss.

and throws her silver arms around it clingingly, and we watch it as it flows, ever singing, ever whispering, out to meet its king, the sea, till our voices die away in silence, and the pipes go out, till we, commonplace everyday young men enough, feel strangely full of thoughts, half sad, half sweet, and do not care or want to speak, till we laugh, and rising, knock the ashes from our burnt-out pipes, and say good-night,

and lulled by the lapping water and the rustling trees, we fall asleep beneath the great, still stars, and dream that the world is young again, young and sweet, as she used to be, ere the centuries of fret and care have furrowed her fair face, ere her children's sins and follies had made her, old loving heart, sweet as she was in those bygone days, a new-made mother, she nursed us, her children, upon her own deep breast.

There the wiles of painted civilization had lured us away from her fond arms, and the poison sneers of artificiality had made us ashamed of the simple life we had led with her, and the simple, stately home where mankind was born so many thousand years ago. Harris said, How about when it rained? You can never rouse, Harris. There is no poetry about Harris, no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harris never weeps. He knows not why. If Harris's eyes fill with tears—

You can bet it is because Harris has been eating raw onions or has put too much worcester over his chop. If you had to stand at night by the seashore with Harris and say, "'Harr, did you not hear? Is it a mermaid singing deep below the waving waters or sad spirits, chanting dirges for white corpses held by seaweed?' Harris would take you by the arm and say, "'I know what it is, old man. You've got to chill. Now you come along with me. I know a place round the corner here.'

or you can get a drop of the finest scotch whiskey you ever tasted but you write in less in no time eris always does know a place around the corner where you can get something brilliant in the drinking line i believe that if you met harris up in paradise supposing such a thing likely he would immediately greet you with so glad you've come old fellow i found a nice place around the corner here where you get some really first-class nectar in the present instance however

as regarded to camping out. His practical view of the matter came as a very timely hint. Camping out in rainy weather is not pleasant. It is evening, you are wet through, and there is a good two inches of water in the bow, and all things are damp. You find a place on the banks that is not quite so puddly as other places you have seen, and you land and lug out the tent, and the two of you proceed to fix it. It is soaked and heavy, and it flops about and tumbles down on you,

and clings around your head and makes you mad. The rain is pouring steadily down all the time. It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather. In wet, the task becomes Herculean. Instead of helping you, it seems to you that the other man is simply playing a fool. Just as you get your side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end and spoils it all. Here, what are you up to? You call out. What are you up to? He retorts. Let go, can't you? Don't pull it.

You've got it all wrong, you stupid ass, you shout. No, I haven't, he yells back. Let go your side. I tell you, you've got it all wrong, you roar, wishing that you would get at him. And you give your ropes a lug that pulls all his pegs out. Ah, the bally idiot. You hear him mutter to himself. And then comes a savage haul, and away goes your side. You lay down the mallet, and start to go round and tell him what you think about the whole business. And at the same time,

He starts around in the same direction to come and explain his views to you, and you follow each other around and around, swearing at one another, until the tent tumbles down in a heap, then leaves you looking at each other across its ruins, but you both indignantly exclaim, in the same breath, there you are, what did I tell you? Meanwhile, the third man, who has been bailing out of the boat, and who has spilled the water down his sleeve, and has been cursing away to himself steadily in the last ten minutes,

Wants to know what the thundering blazes you're playing at and why the blamid tent isn't up yet. Alas, somehow or other, it does go up and you land the things. It is hopeless attempting to make a good fire. So you light the methylated spirits dough and crowd round that. Rainwater is the chief article of diet at supper. The bread is two-thirds rainwater. The beefsteak pie is exceedingly rich in it. And the jam and the butter and the salt and the coffee have all combined with it to make soup.

After supper you find your tobacco is damp and you cannot smoke. Luckily you have a bottle of the stuff that cheers you and inebriates if taken in proper quantity and this restores you to sufficient interest in life to induce you to go to bed. There you dream that an elephant has suddenly sat down on your chest and that the volcano has exploded and thrown you to the bottom of the sea, the elephant still sleeping peacefully in your bosom.

You wake up and grasp the idea that something terrible really has happened. Your first impression is that the end of the world has come, and then you think that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers or else fire, and this opinion you express is the usual method. No help comes, however, and all you know is that thousands of people are kicking you, and you are being smothered. Somebody else seems in trouble too. You can hear his faint cries coming from underneath your bed.

Determining at all events to sell your life dearly, you struggle frantically, hitting out right and left with arms and legs, and yelling lustily the while, at last something gives way, and you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, you dimly observe a half-dressed ruffian waiting to kill you, and you are preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when it begins to dawn upon you that it's Jim. Oh, it's you, is it? he says, recognizing you at the same moment.

"'Yes,' you answer, rubbing your eyes. "'What's happened?' "'Bally's tent's blown down, I think,' he says. "'Where's Bill?' Then you both raise up your voices and show. "'Bill.' And the ground beneath you heaves and rocks, and the muffled voice that you heard before replies from out the ruin. "'Get off my head, can't you?' And Bill struggles out, a muddy, trampled wreck, and in an unnecessarily aggressive mood, he being under the evident belief that the whole thing has been done on purpose."

In the morning you are all three speechless, owing to having caught severe colds in the night. You also feel very quarrelsome, and you swear at each other in hoarse whispers during the whole breakfast time. We therefore decided that we would sleep out on fine nights, and hotel it, and inn it, and pub it, it like respectable folks when it was wet, or when we felt inclined for a change. My morency hail this compromise with much approval. It is not revel in romantic solitude.

give him something noisy, and if a trifle low, so much the jollier. To look at Montmorency, you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of, oh, what a wicked world this is, and how I wish I could do something to make it better and nobler expression about Morency, that has been known to bring tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen. When first he came to live at my expense,

I never thought I should be able to get him to stop long. I used to sit down and look at him as he sat on the rug and looked up at me and think, oh, that dog will never live. He'll be snatched up to the bright skies in a chariot. That is what will happen to him. But when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had killed and dragged him, growling and kicking by the scruff of his neck out of 114 street fights and had a dead cat brought around for my inspection by an irate female who called me a murderer,

and had been summoned by the man next door, but one for having ferocious dog at large, that had kept him pinned up in his own tool shed, afraid to venture his nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold night, and had learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirty shillings by backing him to kill rats against time. Then I began to think that maybe they'd let him remain on earth for a bit longer after all.

to hang about a stable and collect a gang of the most disreputable dogs to be found in the town and lead them out to march around the slums to fight other disreputable dogs on montmorency's idea of life and so as i observed he gave to the suggestion of inns and pubs and hotels his most emphatic approbation having thus settled the sleeping arrangements to the satisfaction of all four of us the only thing left to discuss was what we should take with us

And this is what he had begun to argue when Harris said he'd have enough oratory for the night and proposed that we should go out and have a smile, saying that he had found a place round by the square where you could really get a drop of Irish worth drinking. George said he felt thirsty. I never knew George when he didn't, and says I had a presentiment that a little whiskey, warm, and slice of lemon would do my complaint good. The debate was, by common assent, adjourned to the following night.

and the assembly put on its hats and went out. Thank you for listening to Sleepy. Good night.