Three men in a boat / Трое в лодке, не считая собаки. Книга для чтения на английском языке

CHAPTER III

So, on the following evening, we again assembled, to discuss and arrange our plans.

Harris said:

“Now, the first thing to settle is what to take with us. Now, you get a bit of paper and write down, J., and you get the grocery catalogue, George, and somebody give me a bit of pencil, and then I’ll make out a list.”

That’s Harris all over²⁹ – so ready to take the burden of everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people.

He always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger. You never saw such an agitation in a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would³⁰ have come home from the frame-maker’s, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say:

“Oh, you leave that to me. Don’t you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I’ll do all that.”

And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would send the girl out for nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually start the whole house³¹.

“Now you go and get me my hammer, Will,” he would shout; “and you bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the step-ladder, and I had better have a kitchen-chair, too; and, Jim! you run round to Mr. Goggles, and tell him, ‘Pa’s kind regards, and hopes his leg’s better; and will he lend him his spirit-level?’ And don’t you go, Maria, because I shall want somebody to hold me the light; and when the girl comes back, she must go out again for a bit of picture-cord; and Tom! – where’s Tom? – Tom, you come here; I shall want you to hand me up the picture.”

And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come out of the frame, and he would try to save the glass, and cut himself; and then he would run round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coat he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat, and all the house had to leave off looking for his tools, and start looking for his coat; while he would dance round and hinder them.

“Doesn’t anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? Six of you! – and you can’t find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago!”

Then he’d get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call out:

“Oh, you can give it up! I’ve found it myself now. You might as well ask the cat to find anything as expect you people to find it.”

And, when half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new glass had been got, and the tools, and the ladder, and the chair, and the candle had been brought, he would have another go, the whole family, including the girl and the housemaid, standing round in a semi-circle, ready to help. Two people would have to hold the chair, and a third would help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand him a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold of the nail, and drop it.

“There!” he would say, in an injured tone, “now the nail’s gone.”

And we would all have to go down on our knees and look for it, while he would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if he was to be kept there all the evening. The nail would be found at last, but by that time he would have lost the hammer.

“Where’s the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great heavens! Seven of you, being round there, and you don’t know what I did with the hammer!”

We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lost sight³² of the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in, and each of us had to get up on the chair, beside him, and see if we could find it; and we would each discover it in a different place, and he would call us all fools, one after another, and tell us to get down.

At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed again, and put the point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his right hand. And, with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop the hammer, with a yell, on somebody’s toes.

Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he’d let her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done.

“Oh! you women, you make such a fuss³³ over everything,” Uncle Podger would reply. “Why, I like doing a little job of this sort.”

And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow, the nail would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it. Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made;

and, about midnight, the picture would be up – very crooked and insecure, and everybody dead beat and wretched³⁴ – except Uncle Podger.

“There you are,” he would say, stepping heavily off the chair and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride. “Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like that!”

Harris will be just that sort of man when he grows up, I know, and I told him so. I said I could not permit him to take so much labour upon himself.

I said:

“No; you get the paper, and the pencil, and the catalogue, and George write down, and I’ll do the work.”

The first list we made out had to be torn up. It was clear that the Thames would not allow of the navigation of a boat large enough to take the things we had written down.

George said:

“You know we are on a wrong way altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without³⁵.”

George comes out really sensible at times. You’d be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not just as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

How they pile the poor little boat with fine clothes and big houses; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence, and with – oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! – the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries, with pleasures that bore.

It is lumber, man – all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly can’t row. It makes it so heavy and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment’s rest for dreamy laziness.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so likely to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset. You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life’s sunshine – time to listen to the Aeolian music³⁶ that the wind of God draws from the human heart-strings around us – time to – I beg your pardon, really. I quite forgot.

Well, we left the list to George, and he began it.

“We won’t take a tent,” suggested George; “we will have a boat with a cover. It is ever so much simpler, and more comfortable.”

It seemed a good thought, and we adopted it. I do not know whether you have ever seen the thing I mean. You fix iron hoops up over the boat, and stretch a huge canvas over them, and fasten it down all round, and it converts the boat into a sort of little house, and it is beautifully cosy, though a bit stuffy; but there, everything has its disadvantages, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.

George said that in that case we must take a rug each, a lamp, some soap, a brush and comb (between us), a toothbrush (each), a basin, some tooth-powder, some shaving tackle, and a couple of big-towels for bathing. I notice that people always make gigantic arrangements for bathing when they are going anywhere near the water, but that they don’t bathe much when they are there.

It is the same when you go to the sea-side. I always determine – when thinking over the matter in London – that I’ll get up early every morning, and go and swim before breakfast, and I religiously pack up a pair of drawers and a bath towel. I always get red bathing drawers. I rather fancy myself in red drawers. They suit my complexion so. But when I get to the sea I don’t feel somehow that I want that early morning bathe nearly so much as I did when I was in town.

On the contrary, I feel more that I want to stop in bed till the last moment, and then come down and have my breakfast. Once or twice I have got out at six and half-dressed myself, and have taken my drawers and towel, and started dismally off. But I haven’t enjoyed it. They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind, waiting for me, when I go to bathe in the early morning; and they pick out all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and they sharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so that I can’t see them, and they take the sea and put it two miles out, so that I have to huddle myself up³⁷ in my arms and hop, shivering, through six inches of water. And when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quite insulting.

One huge wave catches me up and throws me in a sitting posture, as hard as ever it can, down on to a rock which has been put there for me. And, before I’ve said “Oh! Ugh!” and found out what has gone, the wave comes back and carries me out to mid-ocean. I begin to strike out for³⁸ the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see home and friends again, and wish I’d been kinder to my little sister when a boy (when I was a boy, I mean). Just when I have given up all hope, a wave retires and leaves me sprawling like a star-fish on the sand, and I get up and look back and find that I’ve been swimming for my life in two feet of water. I hop back and dress, and crawl home, where I have to pretend I liked it.

In the present instance, we all talked as if we were going to have a long swim every morning.

George said it was so pleasant to wake up in the boat in the fresh morning, and dive into the clear river. Harris said there was nothing like a swim before breakfast to give you an appetite. He said it always gave him an appetite. George said that if it was going to make Harris eat more than Harris ordinarily ate, then he should protest against Harris having a bath at all.

He said there would be quite enough hard work in pulling sufficient food for Harris up against stream, as it was.

I urged upon George³⁹, however, how much pleasanter it would be to have Harris clean and fresh about the boat, even if we did have to take a few more hundredweight⁴⁰ of provisions; and he got to see it in my light, and withdrew his opposition to Harris’s bath.

Agreed, finally, that we should take three bath towels, so as not to keep each other waiting.

For clothes, George said two suits of flannel would be sufficient, as we could wash them ourselves, in the river, when they got dirty. We asked him if he had ever tried washing flannels in the river, and he replied: “No, not exactly himself like; but he knew some fellows who had, and it was easy enough;” and Harris and I could hardly believe he knew what he was talking about, and that three respectable young men, without position or influence, and with no experience in washing, could really clean their own shirts and trousers in the river Thames with a bit of soap.

We were to learn in the days to come, when it was too late, that George was a miserable liar, who could evidently have known nothing about the matter. If you had seen these clothes after – but, as the shilling shockers⁴¹ say, we anticipate.

Georgу suggested taking a change of underwear and plenty of socks, in case we got upset and wanted a change; also plenty of handkerchiefs, as they would do to wipe things, and a pair of leather boots as well as our boating shoes, as we should want them if we got upset.

Exercises

1. Read the chapter and mark the sentences T (true), F (false) or NI (no information).

1. The first thing to settle was what to buy.

2. Harris looks like Uncle Podger.

3. George reminds the narrator of his Uncle Podger.

4. Uncle Podger needs help of his whole family to hang a picture.

5. The first list three friends made was all right.

6. People often load their boats of life with foolish things.

7. The friends decided to take a tent.

8. The narrator likes bathing.

9. George would like to dive in the morning.

10. Some fellows would wash friends’ flannel suits in the river.

2. Learn the words from the text:

agitation, nail, gradually, hammer, handkerchief, tool, grunt, thumb, toe, permit, sensible, wisdom, fasten, canvas, disadvantage, towel, evident, sufficient, remind, injured.

3. Practice the pronunciation of the following words.

4. Fill in the gaps using the words from the text.

1. Now, you get a bit of paper and write …, J., and somebody give me a bit of pencil, and then I … make out a list.

2. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coat he … … off, and he did not know where he … put the coat.

3. Two people … have to hold the chair, and a third … help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth … hand him a nail, and a fifth … pass him up the hammer, and he … take hold of the nail, and drop it.

4. Harris … be just that sort of man when he … up.

5. We must not think of the things we could do …, but only of the things that we can’t do … .

6. I … your pardon, really. I … forgot.

7. We will have a boat with a cover. It is ever so much …, and … comfortable.

8. I … not know whether you … ever … the thing I mean.

9. One huge wave catches me up and … me in a sitting posture, … hard … ever it can, down on to a rock which … … put there for me.

10. Harris said there … nothing … a swim before breakfast to give you an appetite. He said it always … him an appetite.

5. Match the words with definitions.

6. Find in the text the English equivalents for:

на следующий вечер, листок бумаги, сказать обиженным тоном, потерять из виду, поднимать шум, вовремя, записать, обходиться без чего-либо, бесполезный хлам, выбрасывать за борт, забегать вперед, на случай если.

7. Find the words in the text for which the following are synonyms:

next, arrange, begin, yell, hand (v), keep, beside, permit, fear, bathe.

8. Explain and expand on the following.

1. That’s Harris all over – so ready to take the burden of everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people.

2. Harris always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger.

3. Uncle Podger would gradually start the whole house.

4. The first list we made out had to be torn up.

5. Throw the lumber over, man!

6. “We won’t take a tent,” suggested George.

7. I notice that people always make gigantic arrangements for bathing.

8. George said two suits of flannel would be sufficient.

9. Answer the following questions.

1. Who reminds of Uncle Podger? Why?

2. Does Uncle Podger need any help? What help does he need?

3. Why was the first list of things torn up?

4. What does the narrator say about our “boats of life”? What does he mean?

5. How will the friends manage to travel without a tent?

6. Does the narrator swim much when he goes to the sea-side? Why / why not?

7. Who protests against Harris having a bath? Why?

8. Why did George withdraw his opposition?

9. Why would two suits of flannel be sufficient?

10. What set of things did the friends decide to take?

10. Retell the chapter for the persons of the narrator, George, Uncle Podger, Aunt Maria.

CHAPTER IV

Then we discussed the food question. George said:

“Begin with breakfast.” (George is so practical.) “Now for breakfast we shall want a frying pan” – (Harris said it was indigestible) – “a tea-pot and a kettle, and a methylated spirit stove.”

“No oil,” said George, with a significant look; and Harris and I agreed.

We had taken up an oil-stove once, but “never again.” It had been like living in an oil-shop that week. It oozed. We kept it in the nose of the boat, and, from there, it oozed down, filling up the whole boat and everything in it on its way, and it oozed over the river, and saturated the scenery and spoilt the atmosphere. Sometimes a westerly oily wind blew, and at other times an easterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a northerly oily wind, and maybe a southerly oily wind. At the end of that trip we met together at midnight in a lonely field, under an oak, and took an awful oath never to take paraffine oil with us in a boat again. Therefore, in the present instance, we agreed on methylated spirit. Even that is bad enough. You get methylated pie and methylated cake.

For other breakfast things, George suggested eggs and bacon, which were easy to cook, cold meat, tea, bread and butter, and jam. For lunch, he said, we could have biscuits, cold meat, bread and butter, and jam – but no cheese. Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself.⁴² It wants the whole boat to itself. It gives a cheesy flavour to everything else there. You can’t tell whether you are eating apple-pie or German sausage, or strawberries and cream. It all seems cheese. There is too much odour about cheese.

I remember a friend of mine, buying a couple of cheeses at Liverpool. Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a strong scent about them that might have knocked a man over at two hundred yards⁴³. I was in Liverpool at the time, and my friend asked me to take them to London.

“Oh, with pleasure, dear boy,” I replied, “with pleasure.”

I called for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab. The cab was very old, dragged along by a sick somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment of enthusiasm, during conversation, called a horse. I put the cheeses on the top, and we started off and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we turned the corner. There, the wind carried a whiff from the cheeses on to our horse. It woke him up, and, with a snort of terror, he dashed off at three miles an hour. It took two porters as well as the driver to hold him in at the station; and I do not think they would have done it, if one of the men hadn’t put a handkerchief over the horse’s nose, and lit a bit of brown paper.

I took my ticket, and marched proudly up the platform, with my cheeses, the people falling back respectfully on either side. The train was crowded, and I had to get into a carriage where there were already seven other people. One grumpy old gentleman objected, but I got in; and, putting my cheeses upon the shelf, squeezed down with a pleasant smile, and said it was a warm day.

A few moments passed, and then the old gentleman began to fidget.

“Very close in here,” he said.

“Quite oppressive,”⁴⁴ said the man next to him.

And then they both began sniffing, and, at the third sniff, they caught it right on the chest, and rose up without another word and went out. And then a plump lady got up, and said it was disgraceful that a respectable married woman should be treated in this way, and gathered up a bag and eight parcels and went. Then the other three passengers tried to get out of the door at the same time, and hurt themselves.

I smiled at the black gentleman, and said I thought we were going to have the carriage to ourselves; and he laughed pleasantly, and said that some people made such a fuss over a little thing. But even he grew strangely depressed after we had started, and so, when we reached Crewe, I asked him to come and have a drink. He accepted, and we forced our way into the buffet, where we yelled, and stamped, and waved our umbrellas for a quarter of an hour; and then a young lady came, and asked us if we wanted anything.

“What would you like to drink?” I said, turning to my friend.

“I’ll have half-a-crown’s worth of brandy, neat, if you please, miss,⁴⁵” he responded.

And he went off quietly after he had drunk it and got into another carriage, which I thought mean.

From Crewe I had the compartment to myself, though the train was crowded. As we drew up at the different stations, the people, seeing my empty carriage, would rush for it. “Here you are, Maria; come along, plenty of room.” “All right, Tom; we’ll get in here,” they would shout. And they would run along, carrying heavy bags, and fight round the door to get in first. And one would open the door and mount the steps, and fall back into the arms of the man behind him; and they would all come and have a sniff, and then go away and squeeze into other carriages, or pay the difference and go first⁴⁶.

From Euston, I took the cheeses down to my friend’s house. When his wife came into the room she smelt round for an instant. Then she said:

“What is it? Tell me the worst.”

I said:

“It’s cheeses. Tom bought them in Liverpool, and asked me to bring them up with me.”

And I added that I hoped she understood that it had nothing to do with me; and she said that she was sure of that, but that she would speak to Tom about it when he came back.

My friend was detained in Liverpool longer than he expected; and, three days later, as he hadn’t returned home, his wife called on me. She said:

“What did Tom say about those cheeses?”

I replied that he had directed they were to be kept in a moist place, and that nobody was to touch them.

She said:

“Nobody’s likely to touch them. Had he smelt them?”

I thought he had, and added that he seemed greatly attached to them.

“You think he would be upset,” she asked, “if I gave a man a sovereign⁴⁷ to take them away and bury them?”

I answered that I thought he would never smile again. An idea struck her. She said:

“Do you mind keeping them for him? Let me send them round to you.”

“Madam,” I replied, “for myself I like the smell of cheese, and the journey the other day with them from Liverpool I shall ever look back upon as a happy ending to a pleasant holiday. But, in this world, we must consider others. The lady under whose roof I have the hon-our of living is a widow, and, for all I know, possibly an orphan too. She has a strong objection to being what she terms ‘put upon⁴⁸.’ The presence of your husband’s cheeses in her house she would, I instinctively feel, regard as a ‘put upon’; and it shall never be said that I put upon the widow and the orphan.”

“Very well, then,” said my friend’s wife, rising, “all I have to say is, that I shall take the children and go to a hotel until those cheeses are eaten. I refuse to live any longer in the same house with them.”

She kept her word, leaving the place in charge of the housemaid, who, when asked if she could stand the smell, replied, “What smell?” and who, when taken close to the cheeses and told to sniff hard, said she could detect a faint odour of melons.

The hotel bill came to fifteen guineas⁴⁹; and my friend, after thinking everything over, found that the cheeses had cost him eight-and-sixpence a pound. He said he dearly loved a bit of cheese, but it was beyond his means⁵⁰; so he determined to get rid of them. He threw them into the canal; but had to fish them out again, as the bargemen complained. They said it made them feel quite sick. And, after that, he took them one dark night and left them in the parish morgue. But the coroner discovered them, and said it was a plot to deprive him of his living⁵¹ by waking up the corpses. My friend got rid of them, at last, by taking them down to a sea-side town, and burying them on the beach.

Fond as I am of cheese, therefore, I considered that George was right in declining to take any.

“We shan’t⁵² want any tea,” said George (Harris’s face fell at this); “but we’ll have a good round, square, fabulous meal at seven – dinner, tea, and supper combined.”

Harris grew more cheerful. George suggested meat and fruit pies, cold meat, tomatoes, fruit, and green stuff. For drink, we took some wonderful sticky mixture of Harris’s, in which you added some water and called it lemonade, plenty of tea, and a bottle of whisky, in case, as George said, we got upset.

We didn’t take beer or wine. They are a mistake up the river. They make you feel sleepy and heavy. A glass in the evening when you are wandering round the town and looking at the girls is all right enough; but don’t drink when the sun is blazing down on your head, and you’ve got hard work to do.

We made a list of the things to be taken, and a pretty lengthy one it was. The next day, which was Friday, we got them all together, and met in the evening to pack. We moved the table up against the window, piled everything in a heap in the middle of the floor, and sat round and looked at it.

I said I’d pack.

I rather pride myself on my packing. Packing is one of those many things that I feel I know more about than any other person living. I impressed the fact upon George and Harris, and told them that they had better leave the whole matter entirely to me. They fell into the suggestion with a readiness. George put on a pipe and spread himself over the armchair, and Harris put his legs on the table and lit a cigar.

This was hardly what I intended. What I had meant, of course, was, that I should boss the job, and that Harris and George should potter about under my directions, I pushing them aside every now and then with, “Oh, you —!” “Here, let me do it.” “There you are, simple enough!” – really teaching them, as you might say. Their taking it in the way they did irritated me. Nothing irritates me more than seeing other people sitting about doing nothing when I’m working. I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can’t help it.

However, I did not say anything, but started the packing. It seemed a longer job than I had thought it was going to be; but I got the bag finished at last, and I sat on it and strapped it.

“Aren’t you going to put the boots in?” said Harris. And I looked round, and found I had forgotten them. That’s just like Harris. He couldn’t have said a word until I’d got the bag shut and strapped, of course. And George laughed – one of those irritating, senseless laughs of his. They do make me so wild.

I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-brush? I don’t know how it is, but I never do know whether I’ve packed my tooth-brush.

My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I’m travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven’t packed it, and wake up, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief.

Of course I had to turn every single thing out now, and, of course, I could not find it. Of course, I found George’s and Harris’s eighteen times over, but I couldn’t find my own. I put the things back one by one, and held everything up and shook it. Then I found it inside a boot. I repacked once more.

When I had finished, George asked if the soap was in. I said I didn’t care whether the soap was in or whether it wasn’t; and I slammed the bag and strapped it, and found that I had packed my tobacco-pouch⁵³ in it, and had to re-open it. It got shut up finally at 10.50 p.m., and then there remained the hampers to do. Harris said that he and George had better do the rest; and I agreed and sat down, and they had a go.

They began in a light-hearted spirit, evidently intending to show me how to do it. I made no comment; I only waited. Harris is the worst packer in this world; and I looked at the piles of plates and cups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes, etc., and felt that the thing would soon become exciting.

It did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing they did. They did that just to show you what they could do, and to get you interested. Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomato with a teaspoon.

And then it was George’s turn, and he stepped on the butter. I didn’t say anything, but I came over and sat on the edge of the table and watched them. It irritated them more than anything I could have said. I felt that. It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped on things, and put things behind them, and then couldn’t find them when they wanted them; and they packed the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed the pies in.

They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter! After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it in the kettle. It wouldn’t go in, and what was in wouldn’t come out. They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking for it all over the room.

“I’ll take my oath I put it down on that chair,” said George, staring at the empty seat.

“I saw you do it myself, not a minute ago,” said Harris. Then they started round the room again looking for it; and then they met again in the centre, and stared at one another.

“Most extraordinary thing I ever heard of,” said George.

“So mysterious!” said Harris.

Then George got round at the back of Harris and saw it.

“Why, here it is all the time,” he exclaimed, indignantly. “Where?” cried Harris, turning round.

“Stand still, can’t you!” roared George, flying after him. And they got it off, and packed it in the teapot.

Montmorency was in it all, of course. Montmorency’s ambition in life is to get in the way and be sworn at.⁵⁴ If he can be anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has not been wasted. To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadily for an hour, is his highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in accomplishing this, his egotism becomes quite unbearable.