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Titel: Passing of the Third Floor Back
von Scott Hemphill, L. M. Montgomery, L. Frank Baum, John Milton, René Descartes, Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Unknown, Norman F. Joly, Norman Coombs, David Slowinski, Mark Twain, Henry David Thoreau, Stephen Crane, John Goodwin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Winn Schwartau, Odd De Presno, Sir Walter Scott, Jules Verne, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, United States. Central Intelligence Agency, United States, Canada, Willa Sibert Cather, Anthony Hope, Edwin Abbott Abbott, Charles Dickens, Frederick Douglass, William Shakespeare, Bruce Sterling, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gene Stratton-Porter, Richard McGowan, Frances Hodgson Burnett, United States. Bureau of the Census, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Robert Louis Stevenson, Anonymous, Jerry Bonnell, Robert Nemiroff, Andrew Lang, G. K. Chesterton, John Bunyan, Sunzi 6th cent. B.C., Harold Frederic, Mary Wollstonecraft, Victor Hugo, René Doumic, Upton Sinclair, Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Plato, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ruth M. Sprague, William Dean Howells, Wilkie Collins, Jean Webster, H. G. Wells, Kate Chopin, Mark Eliot Laxer, Louisa May Alcott, Frank Norris, Edith Wharton, S. D. Humphrey, Henry Hunt Snelling, William Morris, Mrs. Susanna Rowson, Christopher Morley, Sax Rohmer, Oscar Wilde, Gaston Leroux, Henry James, Project Gutenberg, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Various, Robert W. Service, A. B. Paterson, Henry Lawson, Jack London, Laozi, D. H. Lawrence, Julius Caesar, Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, George MacDonald, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Virgil, Theodore Dreiser, Giuseppe Salza, Rudyard Kipling, ca. 50 BCE-16 BCE Sextus Propertius, Robert A. Harris, William Wells Brown, graf Leo Tolstoy, Omar Khayyám, Michael Hart, Library of Congress. Copyright Office, Coalition for Networked Information, Geoffrey Chaucer, Adam Lindsay Gordon, Hiram Corson, Robert Browning, Amy Lowell, Rupert Brooke, Joyce Kilmer, John Gower, Saki, Kenneth Grahame, Anna Sewell, Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, National Atomic Museum, Alexander William Kinglake, Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, James Branch Cabell, Bayard Taylor, Horatio Alger, Booth Tarkington, Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, Michael Husted, Émile Gaboriau, Jerome K. Jerome, Stephen Vincent Benét, Edwin Arlington Robinson, J. Frank Dobie, Joseph Rodman Drake, Eliot Gregory, John Fox, John Muir, Richard Harding Davis, Edgar A. Guest, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Thomas Nelson Page, Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh, Rebecca Harding Davis, Charles Alexander Eastman, Zitkala-Sa, Marie L. McLaughlin, J. M. Barrie, Bram Stoker, Hesiod, Edna Ferber, John McCrae, Anna Howard Shaw, Elizabeth Garver Jordan, Frances Jenkins Olcott, P.-J. Proudhon, Eleanor H. Porter, Mary Hunter Austin, Sarah Orne Jewett, Russell Herman Conwell, Daniel Defoe, Henry Benjamin Wheatley, Ambrose Bierce, Nettie Garmer Barker, Martí Joan de Galba, Joanot Martorell, Oliver Goldsmith, Zane Grey, Winston Churchill, Arthur Machen, L. Cranmer-Byng, Torquato Tasso, H. De Vere Stacpoole, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Frank Richard Stockton, Rutherford Hayes Platt, Sara Teasdale, Samuel Smiles, W. E. B. Du Bois, Phillis Wheatley, Elbert Hubbard, Richard Jefferies, George Henry Borrow, Sherwood Anderson, Vachel Lindsay, David Graham Phillips, Harry Houdini, Eugene Field, Gustave Le Bon, Henry Brodribb Irving, William Healy, Mary Tenney Healy, Charles Godfrey Leland, Ralph Parlette, Don Marquis, Richard Le Gallienne, Stewart Edward White, Andrew Steinmetz, Madame de La Fayette, Abbé Prévost, Honoré de Balzac, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sara Cone Bryant, William Booth, James Nasmyth, Enrico Ferri, Joe Hutsko, Miriam Michelson, Oliver Optic, Victor MacClure, Calamity Jane, Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton, Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Henry J. Coke, Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin, Victor [pseud.] Appleton, Carlo Collodi, Hugh Lofting, John Philip Sousa, Andrew Dickson White, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Isaac Taylor Headland, Amy Steedman, B. M. Bower, William Tuckwell, Clarence Edgar Johnson, Sinclair Lewis, Rex Stout, Carl R. Maag, Steve Rohrer, Mariano Azuela, Royall Tyler, John Buchan, Ross Kay, J. L. Kennon, Eros Urides, Friedrich Schiller, William Cowper Brann, Adelaide L. Fries, Beatrix Potter, Mary Lamb, Charles Lamb, William Blake, Francis Bacon, Samuel Johnson, Tadashi Nakashima, Sidney Lanier, Edward Jenkins, Harriet E. Wilson, Ellen Craft, William Craft, Sir Thomas Browne, Alexander H. Japp, Guy de Maupassant, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Snorri Sturluson, William Makepeace Thackeray, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, M. G. Lewis, Lucan, Edwin Lester Linden Arnold, Frank Bird Linderman, Tingfang Wu, Baron Alfred Tennyson Tennyson, Japan, Lodovico Ariosto, Alan Seeger, Anthony Trollope, Lewis Carroll, William James, Jonathan Swift, Edward Bellamy, Richard de Bury, Charles Mackay, Eliza Burt Gamble, R. M. Ballantyne, Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, William Sharp, 4th century Smyrnaeus Quintus, Noah Webster, Russ Walter, Plutarch, Charles Kingsley, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Sarojini Naidu, Maksim Gorky, Greg Fee, Izaak Walton, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, United States. Army. Corps of Engineers. Manhattan District, European Union, Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, Bertrand Russell, James Whitcomb Riley, S. Weir Mitchell, Horace Walpole, John Ruskin, Martha Young, Richard Lovelace, Henry Van Dyke, Michael Fairless, E. W. Hornung, Henry Rider Haggard, Edward Sylvester Ellis, Laura Lee Hope, Lafcadio Hearn, William Ernest Henley, John Clark Ridpath, G. Mercer Adam, Charles Keyser Edmunds, John A. Carpenter, Steven Levy, Edward Gibbon, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Thomas Hart Benton, Arthur Brisbane, William Godwin, Walter L. Pyle, George M. Gould, Dornford Yates, Saint John of Damascus, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hendrik Willem Van Loon, Isabella L. Bird, J. A. Munk, Sir W. S. Gilbert, Sir Max Beerbohm, George Whale, Edmund Day, Marion Mills Miller, John Murray, Mary Mapes Dodge, Abraham Merritt, Anne Brontë, Emily Brontë, Kakuzo Okakura, E. Nesbit, Charlotte Brontë, William J. Claxton, Christopher Marlowe, Sir John Mandeville, Jos. E. Badger, Titus Lucretius Carus, Charles Brockden Brown, Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot, Stendhal, Laurence Sterne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sophocles, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Graf Ilia Lvovich Tolstoi, Alexis de Tocqueville, H. Barber, Herbert Newton Casson, Frank Lewis Dyer, Thomas Commerford Martin, Frank Tymon, ca. 3rd cent. B.C. Apollonius Rhodius, 12th cent. de Troyes Chrétien, J. Walker McSpadden, Thorstein Veblen, R. D. Blackmore, William Gilmore Simms, Henry Timrod, M. L. Weems, Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay, Francis Hopkinson Smith, Mary White Rowlandson, John Dewey, Margaret Mayo, John Mackenzie Bacon, Owen Wister, Agatha Christie
ISBN 978-3-7429-0814-8
Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Es ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Erlaubnis nicht gestattet, dieses Werk im Ganzen oder in Teilen zu vervielfältigen oder zu veröffentlichen.
By Jerome K. Jerome
Author of "Paul Kelver," "Three Men in a Boat," etc., etc.
New York
Dodd, Mead & Company
1909
Copyright, 1904, By Jerome K. Jerome
Copyright, 1908, By Dodd, Mead & Company
Published, September, 1908
The neighbourhood of Bloomsbury Square towards four o'clock of a November afternoon is not so crowded as to secure to the stranger, of appearance anything out of the common, immunity from observation. Tibb's boy, screaming at the top of his voice that she was his honey, stopped suddenly, stepped backwards on to the toes of a voluble young lady wheeling a perambulator, and remained deaf, apparently, to the somewhat personal remarks of the voluble young lady. Not until he had reached the next corner—and then more as a soliloquy than as information to the street—did Tibb's boy recover sufficient interest in his own affairs to remark that he was her bee. The voluble young lady herself, following some half-a-dozen yards behind, forgot her wrongs in contemplation of the stranger's back. There was this that was peculiar about the stranger's back: that instead of being flat it presented a decided curve. "It ain't a 'ump, and it don't look like kervitcher of the spine," observed the voluble young lady to herself. "Blimy if I don't believe 'e's taking 'ome 'is washing up his back."
The constable at the corner, trying to seem busy doing nothing, noticed the stranger's approach with gathering interest. "That's an odd sort of a walk of yours, young man," thought the constable. "You take care you don't fall down and tumble over yourself."
"Thought he was a young man," murmured the constable, the stranger having passed him. "He had a young face right enough."
The daylight was fading. The stranger, finding it impossible to read the name of the street upon the corner house, turned back.
"Why, 'tis a young man," the constable told himself; "a mere boy."
"I beg your pardon," said the stranger; "but would you mind telling me my way to Bloomsbury Square."
"This is Bloomsbury Square," explained the constable; "leastways round the corner is. What number might you be wanting?"
The stranger took from the ticket pocket of his tightly buttoned overcoat a piece of paper, unfolded it and read it out: "Mrs. Pennycherry. Number Forty-eight."
"Round to the left," instructed him the constable; "fourth house. Been recommended there?"
"By—by a friend," replied the stranger. "Thank you very much."
"Ah," muttered the constable to himself; "guess you won't be calling him that by the end of the week, young—"
"Funny," added the constable, gazing after the retreating figure of the stranger. "Seen plenty of the other sex as looked young behind and old in front. This cove looks young in front and old behind. Guess he'll look old all round if he stops long at mother Pennycherry's: stingy old cat."
Constables whose beat included Bloomsbury Square had their reasons for not liking Mrs. Pennycherry. Indeed it might have been difficult to discover any human being with reasons for liking that sharp-featured lady. Maybe the keeping of second-rate boarding houses in the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury does not tend to develop the virtues of generosity and amiability.
Meanwhile the stranger, proceeding upon his way, had rung the bell of Number Forty-eight. Mrs. Pennycherry, peeping from the area and catching a glimpse, above the railings, of a handsome if somewhat effeminate masculine face, hastened to readjust her widow's cap before the looking-glass while directing Mary Jane to show the stranger, should he prove a problematical boarder, into the dining-room, and to light the gas.
"And don't stop gossiping, and don't you take it upon yourself to answer questions. Say I'll be up in a minute," were Mrs. Pennycherry's further instructions, "and mind you hide your hands as much as you can."
***
"What are you grinning at?" demanded Mrs. Pennycherry, a couple of minutes later, of the dingy Mary Jane.
"Wasn't grinning," explained the meek Mary Jane, "was only smiling to myself."
"What at?"
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