Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome [80]
It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work; it fascinates me, I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me; the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.
You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me; my study is so full of it now that there is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shall have to throw out a wing soon.
And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn’t a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.
But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do not ask for more than my proper share.
But I get it without asking for it – at least, so it appears to me – and this worries me.
George says he does not think I need trouble myself on the subject. He thinks it is only my over-scrupulous nature that makes me fear I am having more than my due; and that, as a matter of fact, I don’t have half as much as I ought. But I expect he only says this to comfort me.
In a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea of each member of the crew that he is doing everything. Harris’s notion was, that it was he alone who had been working, and that both George and I had been imposing upon him. George, on the other hand, ridiculed the idea of Harris’s having done anything more than eat and sleep, and had a cast-iron opinion that it was he – George himself – who had done all the labour worth speaking of.
He said he had never been out with such a couple of lazy skulks as Harris and I.
That amused Harris.
‘Fancy old George talking about work!’ he laughed; ‘why about half an hour of it would kill him. Have you ever seen George work?’ he added, turning to me.
I agreed with Harris that I never had – most certainly not since we had started on this trip.
‘Well, I don’t see how you can know much about it, one way or the other,’ George retorted to Harris; ‘for I’m blest if you haven’t been asleep half the time. Have you ever seen Harris fully awake, except at meal-times?’ asked George, addressing me.
Truth compelled me to support George. Harris had been very little good in the boat, so far as helping was concerned, from the beginning.
‘Well, hang it all, I’ve done more than old J., anyhow,’ rejoined Harris.
‘Well, you couldn’t very well have done less,’ added George.
‘I suppose J. thinks he is the passenger,’ continued Harris.
And that was their gratitude to me for having brought them and their wretched old boat all the way up from Kingston, and for having superintended and managed everything for them, and taken care of them, and slaved for them. It is the way of the world.
We settled the present difficulty by arranging that Harris and George should scull up past Reading, and that I should tow the boat on from there. Pulling a heavy boat against a strong stream has few attractions for me now. There was a time, long ago, when I used to clamour for the hard work: now I like to give the youngsters a chance.
I notice that most of the old river hands are similarly retiring, whenever there is any stiff pulling to be done. You can always tell the old river hand by the way in which he stretches himself out upon the cushions at the bottom of the boat, and encourages the rowers by telling them anecdotes about the marvellous feats he performed last season.
‘Call what you’re doing hard work?’ he drawls, between his contented whiffs, addressing the two perspiring novices, who have been grinding