r fellow,
you spend the time between your office and your train, running about the
town like a dog with your tongue hanging out, running and running and
cursing life. From the clothier's to the chemist's, from the chemist's
to the modiste's, from the modiste's to the pork butcher's, and then
back again to the chemist's. In one place you stumble, in a second you
lose your money, in a third you forget to pay and they raise a hue and
cry after you, in a fourth you tread on the train of a lady's dress....
Tfoo! You get so shaken up from all this that your bones ache all night
and you dream of crocodiles. Well, you've made all your purchases, but
how are you to pack all these things? For instance, how are you to put a
heavy copper jar together with the lamp-globe or the carbolic acid with
the tea? How are you to make a combination of beer-bottles and this
bicycle? It's the labours of Hercules, a puzzle, a rebus! Whatever
tricks you think of, in the long run you're bound to smash or scatter
something, and at the station and in the train you have to stand with
your arms apart, holding up some parcel or other under your chin, with
parcels, cardboard boxes, and such-like rubbish all over you. The train
starts, the passengers begin to throw your luggage about on all sides:
you've got your things on somebody else's seat. They yell, they call for
the conductor, they threaten to have you put out, but what can I do? I
just stand and blink my eyes like a whacked donkey. Now listen to this.
I get home. You think I'd like to have a nice little drink after my
righteous labours and a good square meal--isn't that so?--but there is
no chance of that. My spouse has been on the look-out for me for some
time. You've hardly started on your soup when she has her claws into
you, wretched slave that you are--and wouldn't you like to go to some
amateur theatricals or to a dance? You can't protest. You are a husband,
and the word husband when translated into the language of summer
residents in the country means a dumb beast which you can load to
any extent without fear of the interference of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. So you go and blink at "A Family
Scandal" or something, you applaud when your wife tells you to, and you
feel worse and worse and worse until you expect an apoplectic fit to
happen any moment. If you go to a dance you have to find partners
for your wife, and if there is a shortage of them then you dance the
qu