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Three
Men in a Boat
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. I had them all.
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 seems 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 up the treatment for 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 had
glanced half down the list of “premonitory
symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had
fairly got it...
 Three
Men in The Bummel
“What we want,” said Harris, “is a change.”
At this moment the door opened, and Mrs. Harris
put her head in to say that Ethelbertha had sent
her to remind me that we must not be late
getting home because of Clarence. Ethelbertha, I
am inclined to think, is unnecessarily nervous
about the children. As a matter of fact, there
was nothing wrong with the child whatever. He
had been out with his aunt that morning; and if
he looks wistfully at a pastrycook’s window she
takes him inside and buys him cream buns and
“maids-of-honour” until he insists that he has
had enough, and politely, but firmly, refuses to
eat another anything. Then, of course, he wants
only one helping of pudding at lunch, and
Ethelbertha thinks he is sickening for something.
Mrs. Harris added that it would be as well for
us to come upstairs soon, on our own account
also, as otherwise we should miss Muriel’s
rendering of “The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party,” out
of Alice in Wonderland. Muriel is Harris’s
second, age eight: she is a bright, intelligent
child; but I prefer her myself in serious pieces.
We said we would finish our cigarettes and
follow almost immediately; we also begged her
not to let Muriel begin until we arrived. She
promised to hold the child back as long as
possible, and went. Harris, as soon as the door
was closed, resumed his interrupted sentence.
“You know what I mean,” he said, “a complete
change.”
The question was how to get it.
George suggested “business.” It was the sort of
suggestion George would make. A bachelor thinks
a married woman doesn’t know enough to get out
of the way of a steam-roller. I knew a young
fellow once, an engineer, who thought he would
go to Vienna “on business.” His wife wanted to
know “what business?” He told her it would be
his duty to visit the mines in the neighbourhood
of the Austrian capital, and to make reports.
She said she would go with him; she was that
sort of woman. He tried to dissuade her: he told
her that a mine was no place for a beautiful
woman...

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