Jerome Klapka Jerome

DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE
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FRIDAY, 23RD

Early Rising.--Ballast should be Stowed Away in the Hold before Putting to Sea.--Annoying Interference of Providence in Matters that it Does Not Understand.--A Socialistic Society.--B. Misjudges Me.-- An Uninteresting Anecdote.--We Lay in Ballast.--A Moderate Sailor.-- A Playful Boat.

I got up very early this morning. I do not know why I got up early. We do not start till eight o'clock this evening. But I don't regret it--the getting up early I mean. It is a change. I got everybody else up too, and we all had breakfast at seven.

I made a very good lunch. One of those seafaring men said to me once:

"Now, if ever you are going a short passage, and are at all nervous, you lay in a good load. It's a good load in the hold what steadies the ship. It's them half-empty cruisers as goes a-rollin' and a- pitchin' and a-heavin' all over the place, with their stern up'ards half the time. You lay in ballast."

It seemed very reasonable advice.

Aunt Emma came in the afternoon. She said she was so glad she had caught me. Something told her to change her mind and come on Friday instead of Saturday. It was Providence, she said.

I wish Providence would mind its own business, and not interfere in my affairs: it does not understand them.

She says she shall stop till I come back, as she wants to see me again before she goes. I told her I might not be back for a month. She said it didn't matter; she had plenty of time, and would wait for me.

The family entreat me to hurry home.

I ate a very fair dinner--"laid in a good stock of ballast," as my seafaring friend would have said; wished "Good-bye!" to everybody, and kissed Aunt Emma; promised to take care of myself--a promise which, please Heaven, I will faithfully keep, cost me what it may-- hailed a cab and started.

I reached Victoria some time before B. I secured two corner seats in a smoking-carriage, and then paced up and down the platform waiting for him.

When men have nothing else to occupy their minds, they take to thinking. Having nothing better to do until B. arrived, I fell to musing.

What a wonderful piece of Socialism modern civilisation has become!- -not the Socialism of the so-called Socialists--a system modelled apparently upon the methods of the convict prison--a system under which each miserable sinner is to be compelled to labour, like a beast of burden, for no personal benefit to himself, but only for the good of the community--a world where there are to be no men, but only numbers--where there is to be no ambition and no hope and no fear,--but the Socialism of free men, working side by side in the common workshop, each one for the wage to which his skill and energy entitle him; the Socialism of responsible, thinking individuals, not of State-directed automata.

Here was I, in exchange for the result of some of my labour, going to be taken by Society for a treat, to the middle of Europe and back. Railway lines had been (...)

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