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+*** Project Gutenberg etext of Evergreens, by Jerome K. Jerome ***
+
+
+Scanned and proofed by Ron Burkey (rburkey@heads-up.com) and Amy
+Thomte, from a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow", 
+published by A. L. Burt.
+
+Notes on the editing of this text:
+
+1.  Italicized phrases are delimited by the underline character ("_").
+2.  Hyphens have been left in the text only where it was the clear
+intention of the author.  For example, throughout the text, "tonight"
+and "tomorrow" appear as "to-night" and "to-morrow".  This is
+intentional, and is not simply a legacy of words having been broken
+across lines in the printed text.
+3.  The pound (currency) symbol has been replaced by the word
+"pounds".
+
+
+
+
+EVERGREENS.
+
+They look so dull and dowdy in the spring weather, when the snow drops
+and the crocuses are putting on their dainty frocks of white and mauve
+and yellow, and the baby-buds from every branch are peeping with
+bright eyes out on the world, and stretching forth soft little leaves
+toward the coming gladness of their lives.  They stand apart, so cold
+and hard amid the stirring hope and joy that are throbbing all around
+them.
+
+And in the deep full summer-time, when all the rest of nature dons its
+richest garb of green, and the roses clamber round the porch, and the
+grass waves waist-high in the meadow, and the fields are gay with
+flowers--they seem duller and dowdier than ever then, wearing their
+faded winter's dress, looking so dingy and old and worn.
+
+In the mellow days of autumn, when the trees, like dames no longer
+young, seek to forget their aged looks under gorgeous bright-toned
+robes of gold and brown and purple, and the grain is yellow in the
+fields, and the ruddy fruit hangs clustering from the drooping boughs,
+and the wooded hills in their thousand hues stretched like leafy
+rainbows above the vale--ah! surely they look their dullest and
+dowdiest then.  The gathered glory of the dying year is all around
+them.  They seem so out of place among it, in their somber,
+everlasting green, like poor relations at a rich man's feast.  It is
+such a weather-beaten old green dress.  So many summers' suns have
+blistered it, so many winters' rains have beat upon it--such a shabby,
+mean, old dress; it is the only one they have!
+
+They do not look quite so bad when the weary winter weather is come,
+when the flowers are dead, and the hedgerows are bare, and the trees
+stand out leafless against the gray sky, and the birds are all silent,
+and the fields are brown, and the vine clings round the cottages with
+skinny, fleshless arms, and they alone of all things are unchanged,
+they alone of all the forest are green, they alone of all the verdant
+host stand firm to front the cruel winter.
+
+They are not very beautiful, only strong and stanch and steadfast--the
+same in all times, through all seasons--ever the same, ever green.
+The spring cannot brighten them, the summer cannot scorch them, the
+autumn cannot wither them, the winter cannot kill them.
+
+There are evergreen men and women in the world, praise be to God!  Not
+many of them, but a few.  They are not the showy folk; they are not
+the clever, attractive folk.  (Nature is an old-fashioned shopkeeper;
+she never puts her best goods in the window.)  They are only the
+quiet, strong folk; they are stronger than the world, stronger than
+life or death, stronger than Fate.  The storms of life sweep over
+them, and the rains beat down upon them, and the biting frosts creep
+round them; but the winds and the rains and the frosts pass away, and
+they are still standing, green and straight.  They love the sunshine
+of life in their undemonstrative way--its pleasures, its joys.  But
+calamity cannot bow them, sorrow and affliction bring not despair to
+their serene faces, only a little tightening of the lips; the sun of
+our prosperity makes the green of their friendship no brighter, the
+frost of our adversity kills not the leaves of their affection.
+
+Let us lay hold of such men and women; let us grapple them to us with
+hooks of steel; let us cling to them as we would to rocks in a tossing
+sea.  We do not think very much of them in the summertime of life.
+They do not flatter us or gush over us.  They do not always agree with
+us.  They are not always the most delightful society, by any means.
+They are not good talkers, nor--which would do just as well, perhaps
+better--do they make enraptured listeners.  They have awkward manners,
+and very little tact.  They do not shine to advantage beside our
+society friends.  They do not dress well; they look altogether
+somewhat dowdy and commonplace.  We almost hope they will not see us
+when we meet them just outside the club.  They are not the sort of
+people we want to ostentatiously greet in crowded places.  It is not
+till the days of our need that we learn to love and know them.  It is
+not till the winter that the birds see the wisdom of building their
+nests in the evergreen trees.
+
+And we, in our spring-time folly of youth, pass them by with a sneer,
+the uninteresting, colorless evergreens, and, like silly children with
+nothing but eyes in their heads, stretch out our hands and cry for the
+pretty flowers.  We will make our little garden of life such a
+charming, fairy-like spot, the envy of every passer-by!  There shall
+nothing grow in it but lilies and roses, and the cottage we will cover
+all over with Virginia-creeper.  And, oh, how sweet it will look,
+under the dancing summer sun-light, when the soft west breeze is
+blowing!
+
+And, oh, how we shall stand and shiver there when the rain and the
+east wind come!
+
+Oh, you foolish, foolish little maidens, with your dainty heads so
+full of unwisdom! how often--oh! how often, are you to be warned that
+it is not always the sweetest thing in lovers that is the best
+material to make a good-wearing husband out of?  "The lover sighing
+like a furnace" will not go on sighing like a furnace forever.  That
+furnace will go out.  He will become the husband, "full of strange
+oaths--jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel," and grow "into
+the lean and slipper'd pantaloon."  How will he wear?  There will be
+no changing him if he does not suit, no sending him back to be
+altered, no having him let out a bit where he is too tight and hurts
+you, no having him taken in where he is too loose, no laying him by
+when the cold comes, to wrap yourself up in something warmer.  As he
+is when you select him, so he will have to last you all your
+life--through all changes, through all seasons.
+
+Yes, he looks very pretty now--handsome pattern, if the colors are
+fast and it does not fade--feels soft and warm to the touch.  How will
+he stand the world's rough weather?  How will he stand life's wear and
+tear?
+
+He looks so manly and brave.  His hair curls so divinely.  He dresses
+so well (I wonder if the tailor's bill is paid?)  He kisses your hand
+so gracefully.  He calls you such pretty names.  His arm feels so
+strong a round you.  His fine eyes are so full of tenderness as they
+gaze down into yours.
+
+Will he kiss your hand when it is wrinkled and old?  Will he call you
+pretty names when the baby is crying in the night, and you cannot keep
+it quiet--or, better still, will he sit up and take a turn with it?
+Will his arm be strong around you in the days of trouble?  Will his
+eyes shine above you full of tenderness when yours are growing dim?
+
+And you boys, you silly boys! what materials for a wife do you think
+you will get out of the empty-headed coquettes you are raving and
+tearing your hair about.  Oh! yes, she is very handsome, and she
+dresses with exquisite taste (the result of devoting the whole of her
+heart, mind and soul to the subject, and never allowing her thoughts
+to be distracted from it by any other mundane or celestial object
+whatsoever); and she is very agreeable and entertaining and
+fascinating; and she will go on looking handsome, and dressing
+exquisitely, and being agreeable and entertaining and fascinating just
+as much after you have married her as before--more so, if anything.
+
+But _you_ will not get the benefit of it.  Husbands will be charmed
+and fascinated by her in plenty, but _you_ will not be among them.
+You will run the show, you will pay all the expenses, do all the work.
+Your performing lady will be most affable and enchanting to the crowd.
+They will stare at her, and admire her, and talk to her, and flirt
+with her.  And you will be able to feel that you are quite a
+benefactor to your fellow-men and women--to your fellow-men
+especially--in providing such delightful amusement for them, free.
+But _you_ will not get any of the fun yourself.
+
+You will not get the handsome looks.  _You_ will get the jaded face,
+and the dull, lusterless eyes, and the untidy hair with the dye
+showing on it.  You will not get the exquisite dresses.  _You_ will
+get dirty, shabby frocks and slommicking dressing-gowns, such as your
+cook would be ashamed to wear.  _You_ will not get the charm and
+fascination.  _You_ will get the after-headaches, the complainings and
+grumblings, the silence and sulkiness, the weariness and lassitude and
+ill-temper that comes as such a relief after working hard all day at
+being pleasant!
+
+It is not the people who shine in society, but the people who brighten
+up the back parlor; not the people who are charming when they are out,
+but the people who are charming when they are in, that are good to
+_live_ with.  It is not the brilliant men and women, but the simple,
+strong, restful men and women, that make the best traveling companions
+for the road of life.  The men and women who will only laugh as they
+put up the umbrella when the rain begins to fall, who will trudge
+along cheerfully through the mud and over the stony places--the
+comrades who will lay their firm hand on ours and strengthen us when
+the way is dark and we are growing weak--the evergreen men and women,
+who, like the holly, are at their brightest and best when the blast
+blows chilliest--the stanch men and women!
+
+It is a grand thing this stanchness.  It is the difference between a
+dog and a sheep--between a man and an oyster.
+
+Women, as a rule, are stancher than men.  There are women that you
+feel you could rely upon to the death.  But very few men indeed have
+this dog-like virtue.  Men, taking them generally, are more like cats.
+You may live with them and call them yours for twenty years, but you
+can never feel _quite_ sure of them.  You never know exactly what they
+are thinking of.  You never feel easy in your mind as to the result of
+the next-door neighbor's laying down a Brussels carpet in his kitchen.
+
+We have no school for the turning-out of stanch men in this nineteenth
+century.  In the old, earnest times, war made men stanch and true to
+each other.  We have learned up a good many glib phrases about the
+wickedness of war, and we thank God that we live in these peaceful,
+trading times, wherein we can--and do--devote the whole of our
+thoughts and energies to robbing and cheating and swindling one
+another--to "doing" our friends, and overcoming our enemies by
+trickery and lies--wherein, undisturbed by the wicked ways of
+fighting-men, we can cultivate to better perfection the "smartness,"
+the craft, and the cunning, and all the other "business-like" virtues
+on which we so pride ourselves, and which were so neglected and
+treated with so little respect in the bad old age of violence, when
+men chose lions and eagles for their symbols rather than foxes.
+
+There is a good deal to be said against war.  I am not prepared to
+maintain that war did not bring with it disadvantages, but there can
+be no doubt that, for the noblest work of Nature--the making of
+men--it was a splendid manufactory.  It taught men courage.  It
+trained them in promptness and determination, in strength of brain and
+strength of hand.  From its stern lessons they learned fortitude in
+suffering, coolness in danger, cheerfulness under reverses.  Chivalry,
+Reverence, and Loyalty are the beautiful children of ugly War.  But,
+above all gifts, the greatest gift it gave to men was stanchness.
+
+It first taught men to be true to one another; to be true to their
+duty, true to their post; to be in all things faithful, even unto
+death.
+
+The martyrs that died at the stake; the explorers that fought with
+Nature and opened up the world for us; the reformers (they had to do
+something more than talk in those days) who won for us our liberties;
+the men who gave their lives to science and art, when science and art
+brought, not as now, fame and fortune, but shame and penury--they
+sprang from the loins of the rugged men who had learned, on many a
+grim battlefield, to laugh at pain and death, who had had it hammered
+into them, with many a hard blow, that the whole duty of a man in this
+world is to be true to his trust, and fear not.
+
+Do you remember the story of the old Viking who had been converted to
+Christianity, and who, just as they were about, with much joy, to
+baptize him, paused and asked:  "But what--if this, as you tell me, is
+the only way to the true Valhalla--what has become of my comrades, my
+friends who are dead, who died in the old faith--where are they?"
+
+The priests, confused, replied there could be no doubt those
+unfortunate folk had gone to a place they would rather not mention.
+
+"Then," said the old warrior, stepping back, "I will not be baptized.
+I will go along with my own people."
+
+He had lived with them, fought beside them; they were his people.  He
+would stand by them to the end--of eternity.  Most assuredly, a very
+shocking old Viking!  But I think it might be worth while giving up
+our civilization and our culture to get back to the days when they
+made men like that.
+
+The only reminder of such times that we have left us now, is the
+bull-dog; and he is fast dying out--the pity of it!  What a splendid
+old dog he is! so grim, so silent, so stanch; so terrible, when he has
+got his idea, of his duty clear before him; so absurdly meek, when it
+is only himself that is concerned.
+
+He is the gentlest, too, and the most lovable of all dogs.  He does
+not look it.  The sweetness of his disposition would not strike the
+casual observer at first glance.  He resembles the gentleman spoken of
+in the oft-quoted stanza:
+
+     'E's all right when yer knows 'im.
+     But yer've got to know 'im fust.
+     
+The first time I ever met a bull-dog--to speak to, that is--was many
+years ago.  We were lodging down in the country, an orphan friend of
+mine named George, and myself, and one night, coming home late from
+some dissolving views we found the family had gone to bed.  They had
+left a light in our room, however, and we went in and sat down, and
+began to take off our boots.
+
+And then, for the first time, we noticed on the hearthrug a bull-dog.
+A dog with a more thoughtfully ferocious expression--a dog with,
+apparently, a heart more dead to all ennobling and civilizing
+sentiments--I have never seen.  As George said, he looked more like
+some heathen idol than a happy English dog.
+
+He appeared to have been waiting for us; and he rose up and greeted us
+with a ghastly grin, and got between us and the door.
+
+We smiled at him--a sickly, propitiatory smile.  We said, "Good
+dog--poor fellow!" and we asked him, in tones implying that the
+question could admit of no negative, if he was not a "nice old chap."
+We did not really think so.  We had our own private opinion concerning
+him, and it was unfavorable.  But we did not express it.  We would not
+have hurt his feelings for the world.  He was a visitor, our guest, so
+to speak--and, as well-brought-up young men, we felt that the right
+thing to do was for us to prevent his gaining any hint that we were
+not glad to see him, and to make him feel as little as possible the
+awkwardness of his position.
+
+I think we succeeded.  He was singularly unembarrassed, and far more
+at his ease than even we were.  He took but little notice of our
+flattering remarks, but was much drawn toward George's legs.  George
+used to be, I remember, rather proud of his legs.  I could never see
+enough in them myself to excuse George's vanity; indeed, they always
+struck me as lumpy.  It is only fair to acknowledge, however, that
+they quite fascinated that bull-dog.  He walked over and criticized
+them with the air of a long-baffled connoisseur who had at last found
+his ideal.  At the termination of his inspection he distinctly smiled.
+
+George, who at that time was modest and bashful, blushed and drew them
+up on to the chair.  On the dog's displaying a desire to follow them,
+George moved up on to the table, and squatted there in the middle,
+nursing his knees.  George's legs being lost to him, the dog appeared
+inclined to console himself with mine.  I went and sat beside George
+on the table.
+
+Sitting with your feet drawn up in front of you, on a small and
+rickety one-legged table, is a most trying exercise, especially if you
+are not used to it.  George and I both felt our position keenly.  We
+did not like to call out for help, and bring the family down.  We were
+proud young men, and we feared lest, to the unsympathetic eye of the
+comparative stranger, the spectacle we should present might not prove
+imposing.
+
+We sat on in silence for about half an hour, the dog keeping a
+reproachful eye upon us from the nearest chair, and displaying
+elephantine delight whenever we made any movement suggestive of
+climbing down.
+
+At the end of the half hour we discussed the advisability of "chancing
+it," but decided not to.  "We should never," George said, "confound
+foolhardiness with courage."
+
+"Courage," he continued--George had quite a gift for maxims--"courage
+is the wisdom of manhood; foolhardiness, the folly of youth."
+
+He said that to get down from the table while that dog remained in the
+room, would clearly prove us to be possessed of the latter quality; so
+we restrained ourselves, and sat on.
+
+We sat on for over an hour, by which time, having both grown careless
+of life and indifferent to the voice of Wisdom, we did "chance it;"
+and throwing the table-cloth over our would-be murderer, charged for
+the door and got out.
+
+The next morning we complained to our landlady of her carelessness in
+leaving wild beasts about the place, and we gave her a brief if not
+exactly truthful, history of the business.
+
+Instead of the tender womanly sympathy we had expected, the old lady
+sat down in the easy chair and burst out laughing.
+
+"What! old Boozer," she exclaimed, "you was afraid of old Boozer!
+Why, bless you, he wouldn't hurt a worm!  He ain't got a tooth in his
+head, he ain't; we has to feed him with a spoon; and I'm sure the way
+the cat chivies him about must be enough to make his life a burden to
+him.  I expect he wanted you to nurse him; he's used to being nursed."
+
+And that was the brute that had kept us sitting on a table, with our
+boots off, for over an hour on a chilly night!
+
+Another bull-dog exhibition that occurs to me was one given by my
+uncle.  He had had a bulldog--a young one--given to him by a friend.
+It was a grand dog, so his friend had told him; all it wanted was
+training--it had not been properly trained.  My uncle did not profess
+to know much about the training of bull-dogs; but it seemed a simple
+enough matter, so he thanked the man, and took his prize home at the
+end of a rope.
+
+"Have we got to live in the house with _this?_" asked my aunt,
+indignantly, coming in to the room about an hour after the dog's
+advent, followed by the quadruped himself, wearing an idiotically
+self-satisfied air.
+
+"That!" exclaimed my uncle, in astonishment; "why, it's a splendid
+dog.  His father was honorably mentioned only last year at the
+Aquarium."
+
+"Ah, well, all I can say is, that his son isn't going the way to get
+honorably mentioned in this neighborhood," replied my aunt, with
+bitterness; "he's just finished killing poor Mrs. McSlanger's cat, if
+you want to know what he has been doing.  And a pretty row there'll be
+about it, too!"
+
+"Can't we hush it up?" said my uncle.
+
+"Hush it up?" retorted my aunt.  "If you'd heard the row, you wouldn't
+sit there and talk like a fool.  And if you'll take my advice," added
+my aunt, "you'll set to work on this 'training,' or whatever it is,
+that has got to be done to the dog, before any human life is lost."
+
+My uncle was too busy to devote any time to the dog for the next day
+or so, and all that could be done was to keep the animal carefully
+confined to the house.
+
+And a nice time we had with him!  It was not that the animal was
+bad-hearted.  He meant well--he tried to do his duty.  What was wrong
+with him was that he was too hard-working.  He wanted to do too much.
+He started with an exaggerated and totally erroneous notion of his
+duties and responsibilities.  His idea was that he had been brought
+into the house for the purpose of preventing any living human soul
+from coming near it and of preventing any person who might by chance
+have managed to slip in from ever again leaving it.
+
+We endeavored to induce him to take a less exalted view of his
+position, but in vain.  That was the conception he had formed in his
+own mind concerning his earthly task, and that conception he insisted
+on living up to with, what appeared to us to be, unnecessary
+conscientiousness.
+
+He so effectually frightened away all the trades people, that they at
+last refused to enter the gate.  All that they would do was to bring
+their goods and drop them over the fence into the front garden, from
+where we had to go and fetch them as we wanted them.
+
+"I wish you'd run into the garden," my aunt would say to me--I was
+stopping with them at the time--"and see if you can find any sugar; I
+think there's some under the big rose-bush.  If not, you'd better go
+to Jones' and order some."
+
+And on the cook's inquiring what she should get ready for lunch, my
+aunt would say:
+
+"Well, I'm sure, Jane, I hardly know.  What have we?  Are there any
+chops in the garden, or was it a bit of steak that I noticed on the
+lawn?"
+
+On the second afternoon the plumbers came to do a little job to the
+kitchen boiler.  The dog, being engaged at the time in the front of
+the house, driving away the postman, did not notice their arrival.  He
+was broken-hearted at finding them there when he got downstairs, and
+evidently blamed himself most bitterly.  Still, there they were, all
+owing to his carelessness, and the only thing to be done now was to
+see that they did not escape.
+
+There were three plumbers (it always takes three plumbers to do a job;
+the first man comes on ahead to tell you that the second man will be
+there soon, the second man comes to say that he can't stop, and the
+third man follows to ask if the first man has been there); and that
+faithful, dumb animal kept them pinned up in the kitchen--fancy
+wanting to keep plumbers in a house longer than is absolutely
+necessary!--for five hours, until my uncle came home; and the bill
+ran:  "Self and two men engaged six hours, repairing boiler-tap, 18s.;
+material, 2d.; total 18s. 2d."
+
+He took a dislike to the cook from the very first.  We did not blame
+him for this.  She was a disagreeable old woman, and we did not think
+much of her ourselves.  But when it came to keeping her out of the
+kitchen, so that she could not do her work, and my aunt and uncle had
+to cook the dinner themselves, assisted by the housemaid--a
+willing-enough girl, but necessarily inexperienced--we felt that the
+woman was being subject to persecution.
+
+My uncle, after this, decided that the dog's training must be no
+longer neglected.  The man next door but one always talked as if he
+knew a lot about sporting matters, and to him my uncle went for advice
+as to how to set about it.
+
+"Oh, yes," said the man, cheerfully, "very simple thing, training a
+bull-dog.  Wants patience, that's all."
+
+"Oh, that will be all right," said my uncle; "it can't want much more
+than living in the same house with him before he's trained does.  How
+do you start?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you," said next-door-but-one.  "You take him up into
+a room where there's not much furniture, and you shut the door and
+bolt it."
+
+"I see," said my uncle.
+
+"Then you place him on the floor in the middle of the room, and you go
+down on your knees in front of him, and begin to irritate him."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Yes--and you go on irritating him until you have made him quite
+savage."
+
+"Which, from what I know of the dog, won't take long," observed my
+uncle thoughtfully.
+
+"So much the better.  The moment he gets savage he will fly at you."
+
+My uncle agreed that the idea seemed plausible.
+
+"He will fly at your throat," continued the next-door-but-one man,
+"and this is where you will have to be careful.  _As_ he springs
+toward you, and _before_ he gets hold of you, you must hit him a fair
+straight blow on his nose, and knock him down."
+
+"Yes, I see what you mean."
+
+"Quite so--well, the moment you have knocked him down, he will jump up
+and go for you again.  You must knock him down again; and you must
+keep on doing this, until the dog is thoroughly cowed and exhausted.
+Once he is thoroughly cowed, the thing's done--dog's as gentle as a
+lamb after that."
+
+"Oh!" says my uncle, rising from his chair, "you think that a good
+way, do you?"
+
+"Certainly," replied the next-door-but-one man; "it never fails."
+
+"Oh!  I wasn't doubting it," said my uncle; "only it's just occurred
+to me that as you understand the knack of these things, perhaps
+_you'd_ like to come in and try _your_ hand on the dog?  We can give
+you a room quite to yourselves; and I'll undertake that nobody comes
+near to interfere with you.  And if--if," continued my uncle, with
+that kindly thoughtfulness which ever distinguished his treatment of
+others, "_if_, by any chance, you should miss hitting the dog at the
+proper critical moment, or, if _you_ should get cowed and exhausted
+first, instead of the dog--why, I shall only be too pleased to take
+the whole burden of the funeral expenses on my own shoulders; and I
+hope you know me well enough to feel sure that the arrangements will
+be tasteful, and, at the same time, unostentatious!"
+
+And out my uncle walked.
+
+We next consulted the butcher, who agreed that the prize-ring method
+was absurd, especially when recommended to a short-winded, elderly
+family man, and who recommended, instead, plenty of out-door exercise
+for the dog, under my uncle's strict supervision and control.
+
+"Get a fairly long chain for him," said the butcher, "and take him out
+for a good stiff run every evening.  Never let him get away from you;
+make him mind you, and bring him home always thoroughly exhausted.
+You stick to that for a month or two, regular, and you'll have him
+like a little child."
+
+"Um!--seems to me that I'm going to get more training over his job
+than anybody else," muttered my uncle, as he thanked the man and left
+the shop; "but I suppose it's got to be done.  Wish I'd never had the
+d--- dog now!"
+
+So, religiously, every evening, my uncle would fasten a long chain to
+that poor dog, and drag him away from his happy home with the idea of
+exhausting him; and the dog would come back as fresh as paint, my
+uncle behind him, panting and clamoring for brandy.
+
+My uncle said he should never have dreamed there could have been such
+stirring times in this prosaic nineteenth century as he had, training
+that dog.
+
+Oh, the wild, wild scamperings over the breezy common--the dog trying
+to catch a swallow, and my uncle, unable to hold him back, following
+at the other end of the chain!
+
+Oh, the merry frolics in the fields, when the dog wanted to kill a
+cow, and the cow wanted to kill the dog, and they each dodged round my
+uncle, trying to do it!
+
+And, oh, the pleasant chats with the old ladies when the dog wound the
+chain into a knot around their legs, and upset them, and my uncle had
+to sit down in the road beside them, and untie them before they could
+get up again!
+
+But a crisis came at last.  It was a Saturday afternoon--uncle being
+exercised by dog in usual way--nervous children playing in road, see
+dog, scream, and run--playful young dog thinks it a game, jerks chain
+out of uncle's grasp, and flies after them--uncle flies after dog,
+calling it names--fond parent in front garden, seeing beloved children
+chased by savage dog, followed by careless owner, flies after uncle,
+calling _him_ names--householders come to doors and cry,
+"Shame!"--also throw things at dog--things don't hit dog, hit
+uncle--things that don't hit uncle, hit fond parent--through the
+village and up the hill, over the bridge and round by the green--grand
+run, mile and a half without a break!  Children sink exhausted--dog
+gambols up among them--children go into fits--fond parent and uncle
+come up together, both breathless.
+
+"Why don't you call your dog off, you wicked old man?"
+
+"Because I can't recollect his name, you old fool, you!"
+
+Fond parent accuses uncle of having set dog on--uncle, indignant,
+reviles fond parent--exasperated fond parent attacks uncle--uncle
+retaliates with umbrella--faithful dog comes to assistance of uncle,
+and inflicts great injury on fond parent--arrival of police--dog
+attacks police--uncle and fond parent both taken into custody--uncle
+fined five pounds and costs for keeping a ferocious dog at
+large--uncle fined five pounds and costs for assault on fond
+parent--uncle fined five pounds and cost for assault on police!
+
+My uncle gave the dog away soon after that.  He did not waste him.  He
+gave him as a wedding-present to a near relation.
+
+But the saddest story I ever heard in connection with a bull-dog, was
+one told by my aunt herself.
+
+Now you can rely upon this story, because it is not one of mine, it is
+one of my aunt's, and she would scorn to tell a lie.  This is a story
+you could tell to the heathen, and feel that you were teaching them
+the truth and doing them good.  They give this story out at all the
+Sunday-schools in our part of the country, and draw moral lessons from
+it.  It is a story that a little child can believe.
+
+It happened in the old crinoline days.  My aunt, who was then living
+in a country-town, had gone out shopping one morning, and was standing
+in the High Street, talking to a lady friend, a Mrs. Gumworthy, the
+doctor's wife.  She (my aunt) had on a new crinoline that morning, in
+which, to use her own expression, she rather fancied herself.  It was
+a tremendously big one, as stiff as a wire-fence; and it "set"
+beautifully.
+
+They were standing in front of Jenkins', the draper's; and my aunt
+thinks that it--the crinoline--must have got caught up in something,
+and an opening thus left between it and the ground.  However this may
+be, certain it is that an absurdly large and powerful bull-dog, who
+was fooling round about there at the time, managed, somehow or other,
+to squirm in under my aunt's crinoline, and effectually imprison
+himself beneath it.
+
+Finding himself suddenly in a dark and gloomy chamber, the dog,
+naturally enough, got frightened, and made frantic rushes to get out.
+But whichever way he charged; there was the crinoline in front of him.
+As he flew, he, of course, carried it before him, and with the
+crinoline, of course, went my aunt.
+
+But nobody knew the explanation.  My aunt herself did not know what
+had happened.  Nobody had seen the dog creep inside the crinoline.
+All that the people did see was a staid and eminently respectable
+middle-aged lady suddenly, and without any apparent reason, throw her
+umbrella down in the road, fly up the High Street at the rate of ten
+miles an hour, rush across it at the imminent risk of her life, dart
+down it again on the other side, rush sideways, like an excited crab,
+into a grocer's shop, run three times round the shop, upsetting the
+whole stock-in-trade, come out of the shop backward and knock down a
+postman, dash into the roadway and spin round twice, hover for a
+moment, undecided, on the curb, and then away up the hill again, as if
+she had only just started, all the while screaming out at the top of
+her voice for somebody to stop her!
+
+Of course, everybody thought she was mad.  The people flew before her
+like chaff before the wind.  In less than five seconds the High Street
+was a desert.  The townsfolk scampered into their shops and houses and
+barricaded the doors.  Brave men dashed out and caught up little
+children and bore them to places of safety amid cheers.  Carts and
+carriages were abandoned, while the drivers climbed up lamp-posts!
+
+What would have happened had the affair gone on much longer--whether
+my aunt would have been shot, or the fire-engine brought into
+requisition against her--it is impossible, having regard to the
+terrified state of the crowd, to say.  Fortunately for her, she became
+exhausted.  With one despairing shriek she gave way, and sat down on
+the dog; and peace reigned once again in that sweet rural town.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg etext of Evergreens, by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
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