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Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow-Part4_Jerome K.Jerome(1859-1927)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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other day in Regent Street. I agreed with him as to the utter



impossibility of making it elevenpence ha'penny; but at the same time

I resolved to one day decoy him to an eating-house I remembered near



Covent Garden, where the waiter, for the better discharge of his

duties, goes about in his shirt-sleeves--and very dirty sleeves they



are, too, when it gets near the end of the month. I know that waiter.

If my friend gives him anything beyond a penny, the man will insist on



shaking hands with him then and there as a mark of his esteem; of that

I feel sure.



There have been a good many funny things said and written about

hardupishness, but the reality is not funny, for all that. It is not



funny to have to haggle over pennies. It isn't funny to be thought

mean and stingy. It isn't funny to be shabby and to be ashamed of



your address. No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty--to the

poor. It is hell upon earth to a sensitive man; and many a brave



gentleman who would have faced the labors of Hercules has had his

heart broken by its petty miseries.



It is not the actual discomforts themselves that are hard to bear.

Who would mind roughing it a bit if that were all it meant? What



cared Robinson Crusoe for a patch on his trousers? Did he wear

trousers? I forget; or did he go about as he does in the pantomimes?



What did it matter to him if his toes did stick out of his boots? and

what if his umbrella was a cotton one, so long as it kept the rain



off? His shabbiness did not trouble him; there was none of his

friends round about to sneer him.



Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the

sting. It is not cold that makes a man without a great-coat hurry



along so quickly. It is not all shame at telling lies--which he knows

will not be believed--that makes him turn so red when he informs you



that he considers great-coats unhealthy and never carries an umbrella

on principle. It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No;



if it were men wouldn't be ashamed of it. It's a blunder, though, and

is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over;



despised as much by a Christian as by a lord, as much by a demagogue

as by a footman, and not all the copy-book maxims ever set for ink



stained youth will make him respected. Appearances are everything, so

far as human opinion goes, and the man who will walk down Piccadilly



arm in arm with the most notorious scamp in London, provided he is a

well-dressed one, will slink up a back street to say a couple of words



to a seedy-looking gentleman. And the seedy-looking gentleman knows

this--no one better--and will go a mile round to avoid meeting an



acquaintance. Those that knew him in his prosperity need never

trouble themselves to look the other way. He is a thousand times more



anxious that they should not see him than they can be; and as to their

assistance, there is nothing he dreads more than the offer of it. All



he wants is to be forgotten; and in this respect he is generally

fortunate enough to get what he wants.



One becomes used to being hard up, as one becomes used to everything

else, by the help of that wonderful old homeopathic doctor, Time. You



can tell at a glance the difference between the old hand and the

novice; between the case-hardened man who has been used to shift and



struggle for years and the poor devil of a beginner striving to hide

his misery, and in a constant agony of fear lest he should be found



out. Nothing shows this difference more clearly than the way in which

each will pawn his watch. As the poet says somewhere: "True ease in



pawning comes from art, not chance." The one goes into his "uncle's"

with as much composure as he would into his tailor's--very likely with



more. The assistant is even civil and attends to him at once, to the

great indignation of the lady in the next box, who, however,



sarcastically observes that she don't mind being kept waiting "if it

is a regular customer." Why, from the pleasant and businesslike



manner in which the transaction is carried out, it might be a large

purchase in the three per cents. Yet what a piece of work a man makes



of his first "pop." A boy popping his first question is confidence

itself compared with him. He hangs about outside the shop until he



has succeeded in attracting the attention of all the loafers in the

neighborhood and has aroused strong suspicions in the mind of the



policeman on the beat. At last, after a careful examination of the




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