Three Men in A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

“Now then, you girls,” said our friend Bow to them, cheerily, after it was all over, “come along, you’ve got to wash up!”

They didn’t understand him at first.  When they grasped the idea, they said they feared they did not know how to wash up.

“Oh, I’ll soon show you,” he cried; “it’s rare fun!  You lie down on your—I mean you lean over the bank, you know, and sloush the things about in the water.”

The elder sister said that she was afraid that they hadn’t got on dresses suited to the work.

“Oh, they’ll be all right,” said he light-heartedly; “tuck ’em up.”

And he made them do it, too.  He told them that that sort of thing was half the fun of a picnic.  They said it was very interesting.

Now I come to think it over, was that young man as dense-headed as we thought? or was he—no, impossible! there was such a simple, child-like expression about him!

Harris wanted to get out at Hampton Church, to go and see Mrs. Thomas’s tomb.

“Who is Mrs. Thomas?” I asked.

“How should I know?” replied Harris.  “She’s a lady that’s got a funny tomb, and I want to see it.”

I objected.  I don’t know whether it is that I am built wrong, but I never did seem to hanker after tombstones myself.  I know that the proper thing to do, when you get to a village or town, is to rush off to the churchyard, and enjoy the graves; but it is a recreation that I always deny myself.  I take no interest in creeping round dim and chilly churches behind wheezy old men, and reading epitaphs.  Not even the sight of a bit of cracked brass let into a stone affords me what I call real happiness.

I shock respectable sextons by the imperturbability I am able to assume before exciting inscriptions, and by my lack of enthusiasm for the local family history, while my ill-concealed anxiety to get outside wounds their feelings.

One golden morning of a sunny day, I leant against the low stone wall that guarded a little village church, and I smoked, and drank in deep, calm gladness from the sweet, restful scene—the grey old church with its clustering ivy and its quaint carved wooden porch, the white lane winding down the hill between tall rows of elms, the thatched-roof cottages peeping above their trim-kept hedges, the silver river in the hollow, the wooded hills beyond!