"I found that out an hour ago," he said. "I have been fiddling to the fishes all the time, and played everything I can play without notes."
[Illustration: THE PARSON FIDDLED]
"What made you think of fiddling in the time of such peril?" he was asked.
"I have found in my progress through life," said he, "that there is nothing so well calculated to draw people together as the sound of a fiddle. I might bawl for help till I was hoarse, and no one would stir a peg, but as soon as people hear the scraping of a fiddle, they will quit all other business and come to the spot in flocks."
We laughed heartily at the knowledge the parson showed of human nature; and he was right.
WE PLAN A RIVER TRIP[1]
[Footnote 1: This selection, with On Comic Songs, which follows, is taken from Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome The complete title of the book is Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog)]
By JEROME K. JEROME
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.