Page:The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, a Book for an Idle Holiday - Jerome (1886).djvu/23

 and, in trying to withdraw quietly, you jamb your head. The only other method is to jump up and down outside the window. After this latter proceeding, however, if you do not bring out a banjo and commence to sing, the youthful inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who have gathered round in expectation, become disappointed.

I should like to know, too, by what mysterious law of nature it is that, before you have left your watch "to be repaired" half-an-hour, some one is sure to stop you in the street and conspicuously ask you the time. Nobody even feels the slightest curiosity on the subject when you've got it on.

Dear old ladies and gentlemen, who know nothing about being hard up—and may they never, bless their grey old heads—look upon the pawnshop as the last stage of degradation; but those who know it better (and my readers have, no doubt, noticed this themselves), are often surprised, like the little boy who dreamed he went to Heaven, at meeting so many people there that they never expected to see. For my part, I think it a much more independent course than borrowing from friends, and I always try to impress this upon those of my acquaintance who incline towards "wanting a couple of pounds till the day after to-morrow." But they won't all see it. One of them once remarked that he objected to the principle of the thing. I fancy if he had said it was the interest that