John Ingerfield and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
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From the lively imagination of British humorist Jerome K. Jerome comes this collection of three short stories and two sketches that showcase the range of his story-telling skills. The title story is a sweet, old-fashioned and uplifting love story; the collection also includes a creepy Norwegian ghost story, among others.
Jerome K Jerome
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) was an English writer who grew up in a poverty-stricken family. After multiple bad investments and the untimely deaths of both parents, the clan struggled to make ends meet. The young Jerome was forced to drop out of school and work to support himself. During his downtime, he enjoyed the theatre and joined a local repertory troupe. He branched out and began writing essays, satires and many short stories. One of his earliest successes was Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) but his most famous work is Three Men in a Boat (1889).
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John Ingerfield and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) - Jerome K Jerome
JOHN INGERFIELD
AND OTHER STORIES
JEROME K. JEROME
This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Barnes & Noble, Inc.
122 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
ISBN: 978-1-4114-4812-4
TO THE GENTLE READER;
ALSO
TO THE GENTLE CRITIC
ONCE upon a time, I wrote a little story of a woman who was crushed to death by a python. A day or two after its publication, a friend stopped me in I the street, "Charming little story of yours, he said,
that about the woman and the snake; but it's not as funny as some of your things! The next week, a newspaper, referring to the tale, remarked,
We have heard the incident related before with infinitely greater humor."
With this—and many similar experiences—in mind, I wish distinctly to state that John Ingerfield,
The Woman of the Sæter,
and Silhouettes,
are not intended to be amusing. The other two items—Variety Patter
and The Lease of the Cross Keys
—I give over to the critics of the new humor to rend as they will; but John Ingerfield,
The Woman of the Sæter,
and Silhouettes,
I repeat, I should be glad if they would judge from some other standpoint than that of humor, new or old.
CONTENTS
IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOHN INGERFIELD, AND OF ANNE, HIS WIFE
THE WOMAN OF THE SÆTER
VARIETY PATTER
SILHOUETTES
THE LEASE OF THE CROSS KEYS
IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOHN INGERFIELD, AND OF ANNE, HIS WIFE
A STORY OF OLD LONDON, IN TWO CHAPTERS
CHAPTER I
IF you take the Underground Railway to Whitechapel Road (the East station), and from there take one of the yellow tramcars that start from that point, and go down the Commercial Road, past the George, in front of which stands—or used to stand—a high flagstaff, at the base of which sits—or used to sit—an elderly female purveyor of pigs' trotters at three-ha'pence apiece, until you come to where a railway arch crosses the road obliquely, and there get down and turn to the right up a narrow, noisy street leading to the river, and then to the right again up a still narrower street, which you may know by its having a public house at one corner (as is in the nature of things) and a marine store dealer's at the other, outside which strangely stiff and unaccommodating garments of gigantic size flutter ghostlike in the wind, you will come to a dingy, railed in churchyard, surrounded on all sides by cheerless, many-peopled houses. Sad-looking little old houses they are in spite of the tumult of life about their ever open doors. They and the ancient church in their midst seem weary of the ceaseless jangle around them. Perhaps, standing there for so many years, listening to the long silence of the dead, the fretful voices of the living sound foolish in their ears.
Peering through the railings on the side nearest the river, you will see beneath the shadow of the soot-grimed church's soot-grimed porch—that is, if the sun happen, by rare chance, to be strong enough to cast any shadow at all in that region of gray light—a curiously high and narrow headstone that once was white and straight, not tottering and bent with age as it is now. There is upon this stone a carving in bas-relief, as you will see for yourself if you will make your way to it through the gateway on the opposite side of the square. It represents, so far as can be made out, for it is much worn by time and dirt, a figure lying on the ground with another figure bending over it, while at a little distance stands a third object. But this last is so indistinct that it might be almost anything, from an angel to a post.
And below the carving are the words (already half obliterated) that I have used for the title of this story.
Should you ever wander of a Sunday morning within sound of the cracked bell that calls a few habit-bound, old-fashioned folk to worship within those damp-stained walls, and drop into talk with the old men who on such days sometimes sit, each in his brass-buttoned long brown coat, upon the low stone coping underneath those broken railings, you might hear this tale from them, as I did, more years ago than I care to recollect.
But lest you do not choose to go to all this trouble, or lest the old men who could tell it you have grown tired of all talk, and are not to be roused ever again into the telling of tales, and you yet wish for the story, I will here set it down for you.
But I cannot recount it to you as they told it to me, for to me it was only a tale that I heard and remembered, thinking to tell it again for profit, while to them it was a thing that had been, and the threads of it were interwoven with the woof of their own life. As they talked faces that I did not see passed by among the crowd and turned and looked at them, and voices that I did not hear spoke to them below the clamor of the street, so that through their thin piping voices there quivered the deep music of life and death, and my tale must be to theirs but as a gossip's chatter to the story of him whose breast has felt the press of battle.
John Ingerfield, oil and tallow refiner, of Lavender Wharf, Limehouse, comes of a hardheaded, hard-fisted stock. The first of the race that the eye of Record, piercing the deepening mists upon the centuries behind her, is able to discern with any clearness is a long-haired, sea-bronzed personage, whom men call variously Inge or Unger. Out of the wild North Sea he has come. Record observes him, one of a small, fierce group, standing on the sands of desolate Northumbria, staring landward, his worldly wealth upon his back. This consists of a two-handed battleax, value perhaps some forty stycas in the currency of the time. A careful man, with business capabilities, may, however, manipulate a small capital to great advantage. In what would appear, to those accustomed to our slow modern methods, an incredibly short space of time, Inge's two-handed battleax has developed into wide lands and many head of cattle; which latter continue to multiply with a rapidity beyond the dreams of present day breeders. Inge's descendants would seem to have inherited the genius of their ancestor, for they prosper and their worldly goods increase. They are a