THE OBSERVATIONS OF HENRY
By Jerome K. Jerome
1901
Original
Original
Original
Original
CONTENTS
THE GHOST OF THE MARCHIONESS OF APPLEFORD
THE WOOING OF TOM SLEIGHT'S WIFE
THE GHOST OF THE MARCHIONESS OF APPLEFORD
This is the story, among others, of Henry the waiter—or, as he now prefers to call himself, Henri—told to me in the long dining-room of the Riffel Alp Hotel, where I once stayed for a melancholy week “between seasons,” sharing the echoing emptiness of the place with two maiden ladies, who talked all day to one another in frightened whispers. Henry's construction I have discarded for its amateurishness; his method being generally to commence a story at the end, and then, working backwards to the beginning, wind up with the middle. But in all other respects I have endeavoured to retain his method, which was individual; and this, I think, is the story as he would have told it to me himself, had he told it in this order:
My first place—well to be honest, it was a coffee shop in the Mile End Road—I'm not ashamed of it. We all have our beginnings. Young “Kipper,” as we called him—he had no name of his own, not that he knew of anyhow, and that seemed to fit him down to the ground—had fixed his pitch just outside, between our door and the music hall at the corner; and sometimes, when I might happen to have a bit on, I'd get a paper from him, and pay him for it, when the governor was not about, with a mug of c