Idle Ideas in 1905

Name: Idle Ideas in 1905
Author: Jerome K. Jerome

by Jerome K. Jerome

Pages: about 36
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 40 min at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 22 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

“You say all this to me—to me, a lady? Great Heavens! What has become of chivalry?”
A Frenchman was once put on trial for murdering his father and mother. He confessed his guilt, but begged for mercy on the plea that he was an orphan. Chivalry was founded on the assumption that woman was worthy to be worshipped. The modern woman’s notion is that when she does wrong she ought to be excused by chivalrous man because she is a lady.
I like the naughty heroine; we all of us do. The early Victorian heroine—the angel in a white frock, was a bore. We knew exactly what she was going to do—the right thing. We did not even have to ask ourselves, “What will she think is the right thing to do under the circumstances?” It was always the conventional right thing. You could have put it to a Sunday school and have got the answer every time. The heroine with passions, instincts, emotions, is to be welcomed. But I want her to grasp the fact that after all she is only one of us. I should like her better if, instead of demanding:
“What is wrong in civilisation? What is the world coming to?” and so forth, she would occasionally say to herself:
“Guess I’ve made a fool of myself this time. I do feel that ’shamed of myself.”
She would not lose by it. We should respect her all the more.
LAST year, travelling on the Underground Railway, I met a man; he was one of the saddest-looking men I had seen for years. I used to know him well in the old days when we were journalists together. I asked him, in a sympathetic tone, how things were going with him. I expected his response would be a flood of tears, and that in the end I should have to fork out a fiver. To my astonishment, his answer was that things were going exceedingly well with him. I did not want to say to him bluntly:

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Idle Ideas in 1905

From the opening

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