Three Men In A Boat - Chapter 3 - Classic Fiction Audiobook Read by Dr James Gill

good evening three men on a boat chapter three arrangement settled Harrison's method of doing work how the elderly family man puts up a picture George makes a sensible remark the lights early morning bathing provisions for getting upset so on the following evening we assembled a game to discuss and arrange our plans Harris said now the first thing is to settle want to take witless now you get a bit of paper and write down J and you get the grocery catalogue George and somebody give me a pencil and I'll make a list that's Harris all over ready to take the burden of everything himself and pushed onto the backs of other people he always reminds me of my poor uncle Podger he never saw such a commotion up and down the house and all your life as when my uncle Podger under talk to do a job a picture would come home from the frame makers and be standing the dining room waiting to be put up and our departure would ask what's to be done with it uncle Podger would say oh you leave it to me don't any of you were yourselves I'll do all that and then he would take off his coat and begin he would send the girl out for sixpence worth of nails and one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get and from that he would gradually work down and start the whole house now you don't get me my hammer will he would shout and you bring me the rule Tom I want a stepladder and I better have a kitchen chair too and Jim you run round to mr. goggles and tell him pass card regards and hope his legs better and will he lend him his spirit level and don't you go Maria because I sure want someone to tell me the height and when the girl comes back she was go out again for a bit of picture cord and Tom where's Tom Tom you come here I shall want you to hand me up the picture and then he would lift up the picture and drop it again it would come out to the frame and he would try to say if the glass and cut himself and then he would spring around the room looking for his handkerchief he could not find his handkerchief because it was in the pocket of the coat he'd taken off and he did not know hid where he'd put the coat and all the house to leave looking for his tools and start looking for his coat while he would dance around hither and dither to them doesn't anyone in the whole house know where my coat is I never came across such a set in all my life upon my word I didn't six of you and you can't find a coat I put down not five minutes ago well all the and he'd get up and find that he'd been sitting on it and would call out oh you can give it up I found it myself now might as well as the cats to find anything as I expect you people to find it and when half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger and a new glass had been got and the tools and the ladder and the chair and the candle had been bored he would have another go and the whole family including the girl and the charwoman standing around in a semicircle ready to help two people would have to hold the chair and a third would help him up on it hold him there the fourth would hand him the nail and the fifth would press him the hammer and he would take hold of the nail and drop it there he would say in an injured tone now the nails gone and we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it whilst he would stand on the chair and grunt and want to know if he was to be kept up there all evening the nail would be found at last but by the time he would have then lost the hammer where's the hammer what did I do with the hammer great heavens seven if you gaping around and you don't know what I he did with the hammer we would find the hammer for him and then he would have lost sight of the mark you made on the wall where the nail was to go in and each of us would have to get up on the chair beside him and see if we could find it and would each discover it in a different place he would then call us all fools one after another and tell us to get down he would then take the rule and remeasure and find that he was half thirty one and three thirds of a corner and he would try and do it in his head and then go mad and we would all try to do it in our heads and arrive at different results and snare at one another and in the general rao the original number would have been forgotten and uncle Podger would have to measure it again he would use a bit of string this time and at the critical moment when the old fool was leaning over the chair at an angle of forty-five and trying to reach a point three inches beyond what was possible for him to reach the string would slip and down he would slide onto the piano with a really fine music effect being produced by the suddenness with which his head and body struck all of the notes at the same time and then we had to find the rule and string and gain and a new hole was made and about midnight the picture will bring up very crooked and insecure the wall three yards around looking as if it'd been smoothed down with a rake and everybody dead beat and wrecked except uncle Podger there you are he would say stepping heavily off the chair on the Charles corns and surveying the mess he'd made with evident pride why some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like that Harris will be just that sort of man when he grows up I know and I told him so I said I could not permit him to take such labor upon himself I said no you get the paper and the pencil and the catalog and George write down and I'll do the work the first list we made out had to be discarded it was clear that the upper reaches of the Thames would not allow for the navigation of a boat sufficiently large as to tape the things we had set down as indispensable so we tore the list up and looked at another one George said you know we're on the wrong track altogether we must not think of the things we could do with but only of the things we cannot do without George comes out really quite sensible at times you'd be surprised I'd call that downright wisdom not mail is regards to the present case but with the reference of our trip up the river of life generally how many people on that voyage load up the boat too that is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip but which are really useless number how they pile the poor little craft high with fine clothes and big houses with the useless servants and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them and that they do not care three happens four with expensive entertainment that nobody enjoys with formalities and fashions with pretense ostentation and with oh the heaviest Madison lumber of all the dread what will my neighbor think with the luxuries that only cloy with the pleasure of the bore with empty show that like the criminals iron crowned of your makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it it is all lumber throat overboard it makes the boat so heavy to pull you nearly fainted the oars it makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage you'll never know a moans freedom for anxiety and care never gained a moment's rest for dreamy laziness no time to watch the windy shadows skimming the lightly of the shallows or the glittering Sun beam's flitting in and out among the ripples or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image or the woods all green and golden or the lilies white and yellow or the Sun were waving rushes or the sedges or the orchids or the blue forget-me-nots throw the lumber over ma'am let your boat of life blue light packed only with what you need Emily home simple pleasures one or two friends worth the name someone to love and someone to love you a cat a dog a pipe or two enough to eat and enough to wear and little more than enough to drink for thirst is a dangerous thing you will find the boat easier to pull then and it will not be so liable to upset and it will not matter so much if it does good plane motion dyes will stand water you will have time to think as well as work time to drink life sunshine time to listen to the Olien music that the wind of God draws from the human heart strings around us time to I beg your pardon really I quite forgot well we left the list to George and he began it we won't take attempt to suggest a George will have a boat with a cutter it is ever so much simpler and more comfortable it seemed a good thought and we adopted it I don't know whether you ever seen such thing I mean you fix iron hoops up over the boat and stretch a huge canvas over them and fasten it down all round from stem to stern and it converts the boat into a sort of little house it is beautifully cozy although a trifle stuffy but there everything has its drawbacks as man said when his mother-in-law died and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses George said that in that case we must take a rug each a some soap a brush and comb between us a toothbrush each a basin some tooth powder some shaving tackle sounds like a French exercise doesn't it and a couple of big towels for bathing I noticed that people always make a gigantic arrangements for bathing when they're going anywhere near water but they don't bathe so much when they are there it is the same when you go to the seaside I always determine when thinking over the matter in London that I'll get up early in the morning and go and have a dip before breakfast and I religiously pack pair of drawers and a bath towel I always get the red bathing drawers I fancy myself in red drawers they suit my complexion so but when I get to the sea I don't feel somehow that I want an early morning bathe nearly so much as I did when I was in town on the contrary I feel more that I want to stop in bed till the last moment and come down and have my breakfast once or twice virtue has triumphed and I've got out at six and half and dressed myself and I've taken my drawers and towel and stumbled dismal eeyow but I haven't enjoyed it they seem to keep especially cutting east wind waiting for me when I go to bathe in the early morning they pick out all the three-cornered stones and put them on top and they sharpen up the rocks and cover the points with a bit of sand so that I can't see them they take to the sea and put it two miles out so I have to huddle myself up in my arms and hop shivering through six inches of water and when I do get to the sea it is quite rough and insulting one huge wave catches me up and Chuck's me in a sitting posture as hard as ever it can be down to a rock which has been put there for me and before I've said and found out what has gone the wave comes back and carries me out to the mid-ocean I begin to strike out frantically for the shore and wonder if I shall ever see my friends and home again and I wish I'd been kinder to my little sister when a boy when I was a boy humming just when I given up all hope a wave retires and leaves me sprawling like a starfish on the sand and I get up and look back and find I've been swimming for my life in two feet of water I hop back and dress and crawl home where I have to pretend I have liked it in the present instance we talked as if we were going to have a long swim every morning George said it was so pleasant to wake up in the boat in the fresh morning and plunge into the limpid river Harris said there was nothing like a swim before breakfast to give you an appetite he said it always gave him an appetite George said if it was going to make Harris eat more than Harris normally ate then he should protest against Harris having a bath at all he said that'd be quite enough hard-working towing sufficient food for Harris up the stream as it was anyway I urged upon George however how much pleasant it would be to have Harris clean and fresh about the boat for a week even if we did have to take a few more hundred words of provisions and he'd got to sit by my light and withdrew his opposition to Harris's bath agreed finally that we should take three bath towels so as not to keep each other waiting for clothes George said two suits of flannel will be sufficient as we could wash them ourselves in the river when they got dirty we asked him if he'd ever tried washing flannels in the river and he replied not exactly himself like but he knew some fellows who had and said it was easy enough and Harris and I were weak enough to fancy he knew what he was talking about and the three respectable young men without position or influence and with no experience in washing could really clean our own shirts and trousers in the River Thames with a bit of soap we were to learn in the days to come when it was too late that George was a miserable impostor who could evidently have known nothing whatsoever about the matter if you had seen those clothes after but as the shilling shockers say we anticipate George impressed upon us to take a change of under things and plenty of socks in case we got upset and wanted to change and also plenty of handkerchiefs as they would do to white things and the pair of leather boots as well as our boating shoes should we want them if we got upset end of chapter 3 good evening do this now I hope you're enjoying three men in a boat I'm enjoying it myself because I've never actually read this book before and this particular copy has quite a lot of family significance to myself I'm going to aim to put out one chapter a week so hopefully things will staggered nicely and if you want to be notified when each chapter is published or put out here if you hit the subscribe button down below I'd be grateful for that and you'll also get an update next time we put out one of these videos have a good evening thank you