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Dreams-Part1_Jerome K.Jerome(1859-1927)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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She will reply, in an exasperatingly quiet tone of voice, that she

does like that. Perhaps he will say next, that she did not warn him



against it, and tell him what an idiot he was making of himself,

spoiling the whole house with his foolish fads. Each one will persist



that it was the other one who first suggested the absurdity, and they

will sit up in bed and quarrel about it every night for a month.



The children having acquired a taste for smudging the concoction

about, and there being nothing else left untouched in the house, will



try to enamel the cat; and then there will be bloodshed, and broken

windows, and spoiled infants, and sorrows and yells. The smell of the



paint will make everybody ill; and the servants will give notice.

Tradesmen's boys will lean up against places that are not dry and get



their clothes enameled and claim compensation. And the baby will suck

the paint off its cradle and have fits.



But the person that will suffer most will, of course, be the eldest

daughter's young man. The eldest daughter's young man is always



unfortunate. He means well, and he tries hard. His great ambition is

to make the family love him. But fate is ever against him, and he



only succeeds in gaining their undisguised contempt. The fact of his

being "gone" on their Emily is, of itself, naturally sufficient to



stamp him as an imbecile in the eyes of Emily's brothers and sisters.

The father finds him slow, and thinks the girl might have done better;



while the best that his future mother-in-law (his sole supporter) can

say for him is, that he seems steady.



There is only one thing that prompts the family to tolerate him, and

that is the reflection that he is going to take Emily away from them.



On that understanding they put up with him.

The eldest daughter's young man, in this particular case, will, you



may depend upon it, choose that exact moment when the baby's life is

hovering in the balance, and the cook is waiting for her wages with



her box in the hall, and a coal-heaver is at the front door with a

policeman, making a row about the damage to his trousers, to come in,



smiling, with a specimen pot of some new high art,

squashed-tomato-shade enamel paint, and suggest that they should try



it on the old man's pipe.

Then Emily will go off into hysterics, and Emily's male progenitor



will firmly but quietly lead that ill-starred yet true-hearted young

man to the public side of the garden-gate; and the engagement will be



"off."

Too much of anything is a mistake, as the man said when his wife



presented him with four new healthy children in one day. We should

practice moderation in all matters. A little enamel paint would have



been good. They might have enameled the house inside and out, and

have left the furniture alone. Or they might have colored the



furniture, and let the house be. But an entirely and completely

enameled home--a home, such as enamel-paint manufacturers love to



picture on their advertisements, over which the yearning eye wanders

in vain, seeking one single square inch of un-enameled matter--is, I



am convinced, a mistake. It may be a home that, as the testimonials

assure us, will easily wash. It may be an "artistic" home; but the



average man is not yet educated up to the appreciation of it. The

average man does not care for high art. At a certain point, the



average man gets sick of high art.

So, in these coming Utopias, in which out unhappy grandchildren will



have to drag out their colorless existence, there will be too much

electricity. They will grow to loatheelectricity.



Electricity is going to light them, warm them, carry them, doctor

them, cook for them, execute them, if necessary. They are going to be



weaned on electricity, rocked in their cradles by electricity, slapped

by electricity, ruled and regulated and guided by electricity, buried



by electricity. I may be wrong, but I rather think they are going to

be hatched by electricity.



In the new world of our progressionist teachers, it is electricity

that is the real motive-power. The men and women are only



marionettes--worked by electricity.

But it was not to speak of the electricity in them, but of the



originality in them, that I referred to these works of fiction. There

is no originality in them whatever. Human thought is incapable of



originality. No man ever yet imagined a new thing--only some

variation or extension of an old thing.



The sailor, when he was asked what he would do with a fortune,

promptly replied:






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