Journeys Through Bookland Volume V Part 37

the tune is changed."

We listened again, and the musician struck up in a brisk and lively manner, _Over the Water to Charlie_.

"That's mighty mysterious," said one of my friends.

"Can't cipher it out nohow," said another.

"A notch beyant my measure," said a third.

"Then let's see what it is," said I, and off we dashed at a rapid gait.

As we approached the river, we saw to the right of the road a new clearing on a hill, from which several men were running down toward the river like wild Indians. There appeared no time to be lost, so we all cut ahead for the crossing. All this time the music kept growing stronger and stronger, every note distinctly saying, _Over the Water to Charlie._

When we reached the crossing, we were astonished to see a man seated in a sulky in the middle of the river and playing for his life on a fiddle.

The horse was up to his middle in water, and it seemed as if the flimsy vehicle was ready to be swept away by the current. Still the fiddler fiddled on composedly as if his life had been insured. We thought he was mad, and shouted to him. He heard us and stopped the music.

"You have missed the crossing," shouted one of the men.

"I know I have," replied the fiddler.

"If you go ten feet farther you will be drowned."

"I know I shall."

"Turn back," cried the man.

"I can't," said the fiddler.

"Then how the deuce will you get out?"

"I'm sure I don't know; come and help me."

The men from the clearing, who understood the river, took our horses, rode up to the sulky, and after some difficulty succeeded in bringing the traveler safe to sh.o.r.e. Then we recognized him as the worthy parson, who had played for us at a puppet show in Little Rock.

"You have had a narrow escape," said we.

"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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 hoa.r.s.e, and no one would stir a peg, but as soon as people hear the sc.r.a.ping 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 t.i.tle 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.

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 indolently to 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.

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, must have had it for months without knowing it--wondered what else I had got; turned up Saint Vitus's Dance--found, as I had 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 ague, 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 seemed to have been born with. I plodded 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 grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded 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 cla.s.s! Students would have no need to "walk the hospitals," if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diplomas.

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 a hundred and forty-seven 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, and must have been beating, but I cannot 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 round 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 ever it 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 a decrepit wreck.

I went to my medical man. He was 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 seventeen hundred 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, and you might pa.s.s 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."

And 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 hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it--a cowardly thing to do, I call it--and immediately afterward b.u.t.ted 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, and I put it in my pocket and went out.

I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's, 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?"

"I am a chemist. If I were a co-operative store and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me."

I read the prescription. It ran: