This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Czechris, London, UK The Idol Thoughts of an Idol Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome Section 12 On Furnished Apartments Oh, you have some rooms to let? Mother? Well, what is it? Here's a gentleman about the rooms. Ask him in. I'll be up in a minute. Will you step inside, sir? Mother, I'll be up in a minute. So you step inside. And after a minute, mother comes slowly up the kitchen stairs, untying her apron as she comes and calling down instructions to someone below about the potatoes. Good morning, sir, says mother, with a washed-out smile. Will you step this way, please? Oh, it's hardly worth my while coming up, you say. What sort of rooms are they, and how much? Well, says the landlady, if you'll step upstairs, I'll show them to you. So, with a protesting murmur, meant to imply that any waste of time complained of hereafter must not be laid to your charge, you follow mother upstairs.  When you get outside the rooms, she pauses with her hand upon the door to explain to you that they are rather untidy just at present as the last lodger left only yesterday, and she also adds that this is their cleaning-day. It always is.  The rooms cannot be said to appear inviting. Even mother's face betrays no admiration. Untenanted furnished apartments, viewed in the morning sunlight, do not inspire cheery sensations. There is a lifeless air about them. It is a very different thing when you have settled down and are living in them. With your old familiar household gods to greet your gaze whenever you glance up, and all your little knick-knacks spread around you, with bits of all the girls that you have loved and lost ranged upon the mantelpiece, and half a dozen disreputable-looking pipes scattered about in painfully prominent positions, with one carpet-slipper peeping from beneath the coal-box and the other perched on the top of the piano, with the well-known pictures to hide the dingy walls, and these dear old friends, your books, higgledy-piggledy all over the place, with bits of old blue china that your mother prized, and the screen she worked in those far bygone days when the sweet old face was laughing and young, and the white soft hair tumbled in gold-brown curls from under the coal-scuttlebonnet. Ah! old screen! What a gorgeous personage you must have been in your young days when the tulips and roses and lilies, all growing from one stem, fresh in their glistening sheen. Many a summer and winter have come and gone since then, my friend, and you have played with the dancing fire-light until you have grown sad and grey. Your brilliant colours are fast-fading now, and the envious moths have gnawed your silken threads.  Do you ever think of those dead hands? You seem so grave and thoughtful sometimes that I almost think you do. Come, you and I and the deep glowing embers, let us talk together. Tell me in your silent language what you remember of those young days when you lay on my little mother's lap, and her girlish fingers played with your rainbow tresses. Was there never a lad near sometimes? Never a lad who would seize one of those little hands to smother it with kisses, and who would persist in holding it, thereby sadly interfering with the progress of your making. Was not your frail existence often put in jeopardy by this same clumsy headstrong lad who would toss you disrespectfully aside that he, not satisfied with one, might hold both hands and gaze up into the loved eyes? I can see that lad now through the haze of the flickering twilight. He is an eager bright-eyed boy with pinching dandy shoes and tight-fitting smalls, snowy shirt-frill and stock, and o' such curly hair, a wild, light-hearted boy.  You say yes, old screen, but are you quite sure? It is a serious charge you are bringing. Can it be possible? Did he have to kneel down in those wonderful smalls and pick you up and rearrange you before he was forgiven and his curly head smoothed by my mother's little hand? Ah, old screen! And did the lads and the lassies go making love fifty years ago just as they do now? How men and women so unchanged? Did little maidens' hearts beat the same under pearl-embroidered bodices as they do under mother-hubbored cloaks? Have steel casks and chimney-pot hats made no difference to the brains that work beneath them? Oh, time! Great Cronos! And is this your power?  Ah, yes, they were spun by a mightier than thou, and they stretch beyond your narrow ken, for their ends are made fast in eternity. Aye, you may mow down the leaves and the blossoms, but the roots of life lie too deep for your sickle to sever. You refashion nature's garments, but you cannot vary by a jot the throbbing's of her pulse. The world rolls round obedient to your laws, but the heart of man is not of your kingdom, for in its birthplace a thousand years are but as yesterday. I am getting away, though I fear, from my furnished apartments, and I hardly know how to get back. But I have some excuse for my meanderings this time. It is a piece of old furniture that has led me astray, and fancies gather somehow round old furniture, like moss around old stones. One's chairs and tables get to be almost part of one's life, and to seem like quiet friends. What strange tales the wooden-headed old fellows could tell, did they but choose to speak? At what unsuspected comedies and tragedies have they not assisted? What bitter tears have been sobbed into that old sofa-cushion? What passionate whisperings the setee must have overheard? New furniture has no charms for me compared with old. It is the old things that we love, the old faces, the old books, the old jokes. New furniture can make a palace, but it takes old furniture to make a home. Not merely old in itself, lodging-house furniture generally is that, but it must be old to us, old in associations and recollections. The furniture of furnished apartments, however ancient it may be in reality, is new to our eyes, and we feel as though we could never get on with it. As, too, in the case of all fresh acquaintances, whether wooden or human, and there is very little difference between the two species sometimes, everything impresses you with its worst aspect. The knobby woodwork and shiny horse-hair covering of the easy chair suggest anything but ease. The mirror is smoky, the curtains want washing, the carpet is frayed, the table looks as if it would go over the instant anything was rested on it. The grate is cheerless, the wallpaper hideous. The ceiling appears to have had coffee spilt all over it, and the ornaments, well, they are worse than the wallpaper. There must surely be some special and secret manufacturing for the production of lodging-house ornaments. Precisely the same articles are to be found at every lodging-house all over the kingdom, and they are never seen anywhere else. There are the two, what do you call them? They stand one at each end of the mantel-piece where they are never safe, and they are hung round with long triangular slips of glass that clank against one another and make you nervous. In the commoner class of rooms, these works of art are supplemented by a couple of pieces of china which might each be meant to represent a cow sitting upon its hind legs, or a model of the temple of Diana at Ephesus, or a dog, or anything else you like to fancy. Somewhere about the room you come across a bilious-looking object, which at first you take to be a lump of dough left about by one of the children, but which, on scrutiny, seems to resemble an underdone cupid. This thing the landlady calls a statue.  You examine these various attractions and then dismally ask what the rent is. That's rather a good deal, you say, on hearing the figure. Well, to tell you the truth, answers the landlady with a sudden burst of candour, I've always had, mentioning a summer good deal in excess of the first named amount, and before that I used to have a still higher figure.  Every landlady makes you feel thoroughly ashamed of yourself by informing you, whenever the subject crops up, just to get twice as much for her rooms as you were paying, young men lodges of the last generation must have been of a wealthier class than they are now, or they must have ruined themselves. I should have had to live in an attic. Curious that in lodgings the rule of life is reversed. The higher you get up in the world, the lower you come down in your lodgings. On the lodging-house ladder the poor man is at the top, the rich man underneath. You start in the attic and work your way down to the first floor. A good many great men have lived in attics, and some have died there. Attics, says the dictionary, are places where lumber is stored, and the world has used them to store a good deal of its lumber in at one time or another. Its preachers and painters and poets, its deep-browed men who will find out things, its fire-eyed men who will tell truths that no one wants to hear, these are the lumber that the world hides away in its attics. Haydn grew up in an attic, and Chatterton starved in one. Addison and Goldsmith wrote in garrets. Faraday and De Quincey knew them well. Dr. Johnson camped cheerfully in them, sleeping soundly, too soundly sometimes, upon their trundle-beds, like the sturdy old soldier of fortune that he was, inured to hardship and all careless of himself. De Quince spent his youth among them. Moreland his old age, alas, a drunken premature old age. Hans Anderson, the fairy-king, dreamed his sweet fancies beneath their sloping roofs.  Prigish Benjamin Franklin, savage, the wrong-headed, much troubled when he could afford any softer bed than a doorstep. Young Bloomfield, Bobby Burns, Hogarth, what's the engineer? The role is endless. Ever since the habitations of men were reared two stories high, has the garret been the nursery of genius. No one who honours the aristocracy of mind can feel ashamed of acquaintanceship with them. Their damp, stained walls are sacred to the memory of noble names. If all the wisdom of the world and all its art, all the spoils that it has won from nature, all the fire that it has snatched from heaven were gathered together and divided into heaps, and we could point and say, for instance, these mighty truths were flashed forth in the brilliant salon amid the ripple of light laughter and the sparkle of bright eyes. And this deep knowledge was dug up in the quiet study where the bust of palace looks serenely down on the leather-centred shelves. And this heap belongs to the crowded street and that to the daisyed field. The heap that would tower up high above the rest as a mountain above hills would be the one at which we should look up and say, this noblest pile of all, these glorious paintings and this wondrous music, these trumpet words, these solemn thoughts, these daring deeds, they were forged and fashioned amid misery and pain in the sordid squalor of the city garret. There, from their airies, while the world heaved and throbbed below, the kings of men sent forth their eagle thoughts to wing their flight through the ages. There, where the sunlight streaming through the broken panes fell on rotting boards and crumbling walls. There, from their lofty thrones, those rag-clothed joves have heard their thunderbolts and shaken before now the earth to its foundations. Huddle them up in your lumber-rooms, O world! Shut them fast in and turn the key of poverty upon them. Weld close the bars and let them fret their hero lives away within the narrow cage.  Laugh at the frenzied beatings of their hands against the door. Roll onward in your dust and noise and pass them by, forgotten. But take care lest they turn and sting you. All do not, like the fabled phoenix, wobble sweet melodies in their agony. Sometimes they spit venom. Venom you must breathe whether you will or know, for you cannot seal their mouths, though you may fetter their limbs. You can lock the door upon them, but they burst open their shaky lattices and call out over the housetops so that men cannot but hear. You hounded wild Russo into the meanest garret of the Roussaint Jacques and jeered at his angry shrieks. But the thin piping tones swelled a hundred years later into the sullen roar of the French Revolution and civilization to this day is quivering to the reverberations of his voice. As for myself, however, I like an attic, not to live in as residences they are inconvenient. There is too much getting up and downstairs connected with them to please me. It puts one unpleasantly in mind of the treadmill. The form of the ceiling offers too many facilities for bumping your head and too few for shaving. And the note of the tomcat as he sings to his love in the stilly night outside on the tiles becomes positively distasteful when heard so near. No, for living in, give me a suite of rooms on the first floor of a Piccadilly mansion. I wish somebody would. But for thinking in, let me have an attic up ten flights of stairs in the densest quarter of the city. I have all hair-toiffles-drocks affection for attics. There is a sublimity about their loftiness. I love to sit at ease and look down upon the wasps' nest beneath. To listen to the dull murmur of the human tide ebbing and flowing ceaselessly through the narrow streets and lanes below. How small men seem. How like a swarm of ants sweltering in endless confusion on their tiny hill. How petty seems the work on which they are hurrying and scurrying. How childishly they jostle against one another and turn to snarl and scratch. They jabber and screech and curse, but their puny voices do not reach up here.  But I, my inverter, sit above it all. I am alone with the stars. The most extraordinary attic I ever came across was one a friend and I once shared many years ago. Of all eccentrically planned things, from Bradshaw to the maze at Hampton Court, that room was the most eccentric. The architect who designed it must have been a genius, though I cannot help thinking that his talents would have been better employed in contriving puzzles than in shaping human habitations. No figure in Euclid could give any idea of that apartment. It contained seven corners, two of the walls sloped to a point, and the window was just over the fireplace. The only possible position for the bedstead was between the door and the cupboard. To get anything out of the cupboard we had to scramble over the bed, and a large percentage of the various commodities thus obtained was absorbed by the bedclothes. Indeed, so many things were spilled and dropped upon the bed that toward nighttime it had become a sort of small cooperative store. Coal was what it always had most in stock. We used to keep our coal in the bottom part of the cupboard, and when any was wanted we had to climb over the bed, fill a shovel full, and then crawl back. It was an exciting moment when we reached the middle of the bed. We would hold our breath, fix our eyes upon the shovel, and poise ourselves for the last move. The next instant we and the coals and the shovel and the bed would be all mixed up together. I've heard of the people going into raptures over beds of coal. We slept in one every night, and were not in the least stuck up about it. But our attic, unique though it was, had by no means exhausted the architect's sense of humour. The arrangement of the whole house was a marvel of originality. All the doors opened outward, so that if anyone wanted to leave a room for any moment that you were coming downstairs, it was unpleasant for you. There was no ground floor. Its ground floor belonged to a house in the next court, and the front door opened direct upon a flight of stairs leading down to the cellar. Visitors on entering the house would suddenly shoot past the person who had answered the door to them and disappear down these stairs. Those of a nervous temperament used to imagine that it was a trap laid for them, and would shout murder as they lay on their backs at the bottom till somebody came and picked them up. It is a long time ago now that I last saw the inside of an attic. I have tried various floors since, but I have not found that they have made much difference to me. Life tastes much the same whether we quaff it from a golden goblet or drink it out of a stone mug. The hours come laden with the same mixture of joy and sorrow, no matter where we wait for them. A whisket of broadcloth or a fustian is alike to an aching heart, and we laugh no merrier on velvet cushions than we did on wooden chairs. Often have I sighed in those low-ceiling rooms, yet disappointments have come neither less nor lighter since I quitted them. Life works upon a compensating balance, and the happiness we gain in one direction we lose in another. As our means increase so do our desires, and we ever stand midway between the two. When we reside in an attic we enjoy a supper of fried fish and stout. When we occupy the first floor it takes an elaborate dinner at the Continental to give us the same amount of satisfaction. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Czechris London UK The Idol Thoughts of an Idol Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome On Dress and Deportment They say, people who ought to be ashamed of themselves do, that the consciousness of being well-dressed imparts a blissfulness to the human heart that religion is powerless to bestow. I'm afraid these cynical persons are sometimes correct. I know that when I was a very young man, many, many years ago as the storybooks say, and wanted cheering up, I used to go and dress myself in all my best clothes. If I had been annoyed in any manner, if my washerwoman had discharged me, for instance, or my blank verse poem had been returned for the tenth time with the editor's compliments and regrets that owing to want of space he is unable to avail himself of kind offer, or I had been snubbed by the woman I loved as man never loved before. By the way, it's really extraordinary what a variety of ways of loving there must be. We all do it as it was never done before. I don't know how our great-grandchildren will manage. They will have to do it on their heads, by their time, if they persist in not clashing with any previous method. Well, as I was saying, when these unpleasant sort of things happened and I felt crushed, I put on all my best clothes and went out. It brought back my vanishing self-esteem. In a glossy new hat and a pair of trousers with a fold down the front, carefully preserved by keeping them under the bed. I don't mean on the floor, you know, but between the bed and the mattress. I felt I was somebody, and that there were other washerwomen. I, and even other girls, to love, and who would perhaps appreciate a clever, good-looking young fellow. I didn't care. That was my reckless way. I would make love to other maidens. I felt that in those clothes I could do it. They have a wonderful deal to do with courting, clothes have. It is half the battle. At all events the young man thinks so, and it generally takes him a couple of hours to get himself up for the occasion. His first half-hour is occupied in trying to decide whether to wear his light suit with a cane and drab billy-cock, or his black tails with a chimney-pot hat and his new umbrella. He is sure to be unfortunate in either decision. If he wears his light suit, and takes the stick, it comes on to rain, and he reaches the house in a damp and muddy condition, and spends the evening trying to hide his boots. If, on the other hand, he decides in favour of the top hat and umbrella, nobody would ever dream of going out in a top hat without an umbrella, it would be like letting baby, blessed, toddle out without its nurse.  One lasts me a very long while, I can tell you. I only wear it when— Well, never mind when I wear it. It lasts me a very long while. I've had my present one five years. It was rather old-fashioned last summer. But the shape has come round again now, and I look quite stylish. But to return to our young man and his courting. If he starts off with the top hat and umbrella, the afternoon turns out fearfully hot, and the perspiration takes all the soap out of his moustache and converts the beautifully arranged curl over his forehead into a limp wisp resembling a lump of seaweed. The fates are never favourable to the poor wretch. If he does by any chance reach the door in proper condition, she has gone out with her cousin and won't be back till late. How a young lover made ridiculous by the gawkiness of modern costume must envy the picturesque glance of seventy years ago. Look at them, on the Christmas cards, with their curly hair and natty hats, their well-shaped legs encased in smalls, their dainty Hessian boots, their ruffling frills, their canes and dangling seals. No wonder the little maiden in the big poke-bonnet and the light-blue sash casts down her eyes and is completely one. Men could win hearts in clothes like that. But what can you expect from baggy trousers and a monkey-jacket? Clothes have more effect upon us than we imagine. Our deportment depends upon our dress. Make a man get into CD-worn-out rags and he will skulk along with his head hanging down like a man going out to fetch his own supper-beer. But deck out the same article in Gorgeous Raymond in fine linen and he will strut down the main thoroughfare swinging his cane and looking at the girls as perky as a bantam-cock. Clothes alter our very nature. A man could not help being fierce and daring with a plume in his bonnet, a dagger in his belt and a lot of puffy white things all down his sleeves. But in an Ulster he wants to get behind a lamppost and call police. I am quite ready to admit that you can find sterling merit, honest worth, deep affection and all such like virtues of the roast-beef-and-plum-pudding school as much and perhaps more under broad cloth and tweed as ever existed beneath silk and velvet. But the spirit of that nightly chivalry that rode a tilt for ladies' love and fought for ladies' smiles needs the clatter of steel and the rustle of plumes in it from its grave between the dusty folds of tapestry and underneath the musty leaves of mouldering chronicles. The world must be getting old, I think. It dresses so very soberly now. We have been through the infant period of humanity when we used to run about with nothing on but a long loose robe and like to have our feet bare. And then came the rough barbaric age, the boyhood of our race. We didn't care what we wore then, but thought it nice to tattoo ourselves all over and we never did our hair. And after that the world grew into a young man and became foppish. It decked itself in flowing curls and scarlet doublets and went courting and bragging and bouncing, making a brave show. But all those merry, foolish days of youth are gone and we are very sober, very solemn and very stupid, some say, now. The world is a grave middle-aged gentleman in this nineteenth century and would be shocked to see itself with a bit of finery on. So it dresses in black coats and trousers and black hats and black boots and, dear me, it is such a very respectable gentleman to think it could ever have gone gadding about as a troubadour or a nighterrant dressed in all those fancy colours. Ah, well, we are more sensible in this age. Or at least we think ourselves so. It is a general theory nowadays that sense and dullness go together. Goodness is another quality that always goes with blackness. Very good people indeed, you will notice, dress all together in black, even to gloves and neckties, and they will probably take to black shirts before long. Medium goods indulge in light trousers on weekdays and some of them even go so far as to wear fancy waistcoats. On the other hand, people who care nothing for a future state go about in light suits and there have been known wretches so abandoned as to wear a white hat. Such people, however, are never spoken of in gentile society and perhaps I ought not to have referred to them here. By the way, talking of light suits, have you ever noticed how people stare at you the first time you go out in a new light suit? They do not notice it so much afterward. The population of London have got accustomed to it by the third time you wear it. I say you because I am not speaking from my own experience. I do not wear such things at all myself. As I said, only sinful people do so. I wish though it were not so and that one could be good and respectable and sensible without making oneself a guy. I look in the glass sometimes at my two long cylindrical bags, so picturesquely rugged about the knees, my stand-up collar and billy-cock hat and wonder what right I have to go about making God's world hideous. Then wild and wicked thoughts come into my heart. I don't want to be good and respectable. I never can be sensible, I'm told, so that don't matter.  Why should we all try to look like ants crawling over a dust heap? Why shouldn't we dress a little gaily? I'm sure if we did we should be happier. True, it is a little thing, but we are a little race and what is the use of our pretending otherwise and spoiling fun? Let philosophers get themselves up like old crows if they like but let me be a butterfly. Women, at all events, ought to dress prettily. It is their duty. They are the flowers of the earth and were meant to show it up. We abuse them a good deal, we men, but goodness knows the old world will be dull enough without their dresses and fair faces. How they brighten up every place they come into. What a sunny commotion they, relations, of course, make in our dingy bachelor chambers. And what a delightful litter their ribbons and laces and gloves and hats and parasols and kerchiefs make. It is as if a wandering rainbow had dropped in to pay us a visit. It is one of the chief charms of the summer, to my mind, the way our little maids come out in pretty colours. I like to see the pink and blue and white glancing between the trees, dotting the green fields and flashing back the sunlight. You can see the bright colours such a long way off.  I can see them distinctly, though it is three miles away. I thought at first they were milestones out for a lark. It's so nice to be able to see the darlings a long way off.  Talking of fields and milestones reminds me that I want to say, in all seriousness, a few words about women's boots. The women of these islands all wear boots too big for them. They can never get a boot to fit. The bootmakers do not keep sizes small enough. Over and over again have I known women sit down on the top rail of a style and declare they could not go a step further because their boots hurt them so. And it has always been the same complaint. Too big. It is time this state of things was altered. In the name of the husbands and fathers of England I call upon the bootmakers to reform. Our wives, our daughters and our cousins are not to be blamed and tortured with impunity. Why cannot narrow twos be kept more in stock? That is the size I find most women take. The waistband is another item of feminine apparel that is always too big. The dressmakers make these things so loose that the hooks and eyes by which they are fastened burst off every now and then with a report like thunder. Why women suffer these wrongs? Why they do not insist in having their clothes made small enough for them? I cannot conceive. It can hardly be that they are disinclined to trouble themselves about matters of mere dress, for dress is the one subject that they really do think about. It is the only topic they ever get thoroughly interested in and they talk about it all day long. If you see two women together you may bet your bottom dollar they are discussing their own or their friend's clothes. You notice a couple of childlike beings conversing by a window and you wonder what sweet helpful words are falling from their sainted lips. So you move nearer and then you hear one say, So I took in the waistband and let out a seam and it fits beautifully now. Well, says the other, I shall wear my plum-coloured body to the Joneses with a yellow plastron and they've got some lovely gloves at Puttix, only one and eleven pence. I went for a drive through a part of Derbyshire once with a couple of ladies. It was a beautiful bit of country and they enjoyed themselves immensely. They talked dressmaking the whole time. Pretty view, that, I would say, waving my umbrella round. Look at those blue distant hills. That little white speck nestling in the woods is Chatsworth and over there— Yes, very pretty indeed, one would reply. Well, why not get a yard of Sarsnet? What, and leave the skirt exactly as it is? Certainly. What place do you call this? Then I would draw their attention to the fresh beauties that kept sweeping into view and they would glance round and say, charming, sweetly pretty, and immediately go off into raptures over each other's pocket-hanker-chiefs and mourn with one another over the decadence of Cambric thrilling. I believe if two women were cast together upon a desert island they would spend each day arguing the respective merits of seashells and bird's-eggs considered as trimmings and would have a new fashion in fig-leaves every month. Very young men think a good deal about clothes, but they don't talk about them to each other. They would not find much encouragement.  Indeed, he gets a good deal more abuse from them than is necessary. His is a harmless failing and it soon wears out. Besides, a man who has no phoppery at twenty would be a slatenly dirty-collar unbrushed coat-man at forty. A little fob-ishness in a young man is good. It is human. I like to see a young cock ruffle his feathers, stretch his neck and crow as if the whole world belonged to him. I don't like a modest retiring man. Nobody does, not really. However much they may pray about modest worth and other things they do not understand. A meek deportment is a great mistake in the world. Uriah Heap's father was a very poor judge of human nature, or he would not have told his son, as he did, that people liked humbleness. There is nothing annoys them more as a rule. Rows are half the fun of life and you can't have rows with humble, meek answering individuals. They turn away our wrath and that is just what we do not want. We want to let it out. We have worked ourselves up into a state of exhilarating fury and then just as we are anticipating the enjoyment of a vigorous set to, they spoil all our plans with their exasperating humility. Zantipi's life must have been one long misery tied to that calmly irritating man's socrates. Fancy a married woman doomed to live on from day to day without one single quarrel with her husband. A man ought to humour his wife in these things.  They have none of the enjoyments we have. They go to no political meetings. They may not even belong to the local amateur parliament. They are excluded from smoking carriages on the Metropolitan Railway and they never see a comic paper. Or if they do, they do not know it is comic. Nobody tells them. Surely with existence such a dreary blank for them as this we might provide a little row for their amusement now and then, even if we do not feel inclined for it ourselves. A really sensible man does so and is loved accordingly for it is little acts of kindness such as this that go straight to a woman's heart. It is such like proofs of loving self-sacrifice that make her tell her female friends what a good husband he was. After he's dead. Yes, poor Zantipi must have had a hard time of it. The bucket episode was particularly sad for her. Poor woman. She did think she would rouse him up a bit with that. She had taken the trouble to fill the bucket. Perhaps been a long way to get specially dirty water and she waited for him. And then to be met in such a way after all. Most likely she sat down and had a good cry afterward. They must have seemed also hopeless to the poor child. And for all we know she had no mother to whom she could go and abuse him. What was it to her that her husband was a great philosopher? Great philosophy don't count in married life. There was a very good little boy once who wanted to go to sea and the captain asked him what he could do. He said he could do the multiplication table backward and paste seaweed in a book. That he knew how many times the word begat occurred in the Old Testament and could recite the boy stood on the burning deck and Wordsworths we are seven. Very good, very good indeed said the man of the sea. And can ye carry coals? It is just the same when you want to marry. Great ability is not required so much as little usefulness. Brains are at a discount in the married state. There is no demand for them, no appreciation even. Our wives summers up according to a standard of their own in which brilliancy of intellect obtains no marks. Your lady and mistress is not at all impressed by your cleverness and talent, my dear reader, not in the slightest. Give her a man who can do an errand neatly without attempting to use his own judgment over it or any nonsense of that kind and who can be trusted to hold a child the right way up and not make himself objectionable whenever there is lukewarm mutton for dinner.  End of section 13 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Czechress London UK The Idol Thoughts of an Idol Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome Section 14 on memory I remember I remember in the days of chill November how the blackbird on the... I forget the rest. It is the beginning of the first piece of poetry I ever learned for hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle I take no note of, it being of a frivolous character and lacking in the qualities of true poetry. I collected fourpence by the recital of I remember I remember. I knew it was fourpence because they told me that if I kept it until I got twopence more I should have sixpence which argument, albeit undeniable, moved me not and the money was squandered to the best of my recollection on the very next morning although upon what memory is a blank? That is just the way with memory. Nothing that she brings to us is complete.  All her toys are broken. I remember tumbling into a huge dust hole when a very small boy but I have not the faintest recollection of ever getting out again and if memory were all we had to trust to I should be compelled to believe I was there still. At another time, some years later I was assisting at an exceedingly interesting love scene but the only thing about it I can call to mind distinctly is that at the most critical moment somebody suddenly opened the door and said Emily, you're wanted. In a supple-crawl tone that gave one the idea the police had come for her. All the tender words she said to me and all the beautiful things I said to her are utterly forgotten. Life altogether is but a crumbling ruin when we turn to look behind. A shattered column here where a massive portal stood the broken shaft of a window to mark my lady's bower and a mouldering heap of blackened stones where the glowing flames once leaped and over all the tinted lichen and the ivy clinging green. For everything looms pleasant through the softening haze of time even the sadness that is past seems sweet. Our boyish days look very merry to us now all nutting hoop and gingerbread. The snubbings and toothaches and the Latin verbs are all forgotten the Latin verbs especially. And we fancy we were very happy when we were hobbled ahoyes and loved and we wish that we could love again. We never think of the heartaches or the sleepless nights or the hot dryness of our throats when she said she could never be anything to us but a sister as if any man wanted more sisters. Yes, it is the brightness not the darkness that we see when we look back the sunshine casts no shadows on the past the road that we have traversed stretches very fair behind us we see not the sharp stones we dwell but on the roses by the wayside and the strong briars that stung us are to our distant eyes all tendrils waving in the wind God be thanked that it is so that the ever-lengthening chain of memory has only pleasant links and that the bitterness and sorrow of today are smiled at on the morrow. It seems as though the brightest side of everything were also its highest and best so that as our little lives sink back behind us into the dark sea of forgetfulness all that which is the lightest and the most gladsome is the last to sink and stands above the waters long in sight when the angry thoughts and smarting pain are buried deep below the waves and trouble us no more. It is this glamour of the past, I suppose, that makes old folk talk so much nonsense about the days when they were young. The world appears to have been a very superior sort of place then and things were more like what they ought to be boys were boys then and girls were very different also winters were something like winters and summers not at all the wretched things we get put off with nowadays as for the wonderful deeds people did in those times and the extraordinary events that happened it takes three strong men to believe half of them I like to hear one of the old boys telling all about it to a party of youngsters who he knows cannot contradict him it is odd if after a while he doesn't swear that the moon shone every night when he was a boy and that tossing mad bulls in a blanket was the favourite sport at his school it always has been and always will be the same the old folk of our grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden and the young folk of today will drone out a nicely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generation oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday take up the literature of 1835 and you will find the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift as did the German minorsingers long before them and the old Norse saga writers long before that asking for the same thing side the early prophets and the philosophers of ancient Greece from all accounts the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created all I can say is that it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened to the public for it is very pleasant even now if you only keep as much as possible in the sunshine and take the rain good-temperedly yes, there is no gain saying there must have been somewhat sweeter in that dewy morning of creation when it was young and fresh when the feet of the tramping millions had not trodden its grass to dust nor the din of the myriad cities chased the silence forever away life must have been noble and solemn to those free-footed, loose-robed fathers of the human race walking hand in hand with God under the great sky they lived in sun-kissed tents flowing herds they took their simple wants from the loving hand of nature they toiled and talked and thought and the great earth rolled round in stillness not yet laden with trouble and wrong those days are past now the quiet childhood of humanity spent in the far-off forest glades and by the murmuring rivers is gone forever and human life is deepening down to manhood doubt and hope its age of restful peace is past it has its work to finish and must hasten on what that work may be what this world's share is in the great design we know not though our unconscious hands are helping to accomplish it like the tiny coral insect working deep under the dark waters we strive and struggle each for our own little ends nor dream of the vast fabric we are building up for God let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days that never will be ours again our work lies in front, not behind us and forward is our motto let us not sit with folded hands gazing upon the past as if it were the building it is but the foundation let us not waste heart and life thinking of what might have been and forgetting the maybe that lies before us opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost and the happiness that comes to us we heed not because of the happiness that is gone years ago when I used to wander of an evening from the fireside to the pleasant land of fairy tales I met a doubty night and true many dangers had he overcome in many lands had been and all men knew him for a brave and well-tried night and one that knew not fear except maybe upon such seasons when even a brave man might feel afraid and not be ashamed now as this night one day was pricking wearily along a toilsome road his heart misgave him and was sore within him because of the trouble of the way rocks, dark and of a monstrous size hung high above his head and like enough it seemed unto the night that they should fall and he lie low beneath them chasms there were on either side and dark some caves where in fierce robbers lived and dragons very terrible whose jaws dripped blood and upon the road there hung a darkness as of night so it came over that good night that he would no more press forward but seek another road less grievously beset with difficulty unto his gentle steed but when in haste he turned and looked behind much marvelled our brave night for low of all the way that he had ridden there was naught for eye to see but at his horse's heels there yawned a mighty gulf whereof no man might ever spy the bottom so deep was that same gulf then when Sir Gelland saw that of going back there was none he prayed to Good Saint Cuthbert and setting spurs into his steed rode forward bravely and most joyously and naught harmed him there is no returning on the road of life the frail bridge of time on which we tread sinks back into eternity at every step we take the past is gone from us forever it is gathered in and garnered it belongs to us no more no single word can ever be unspoken no single step retraced therefore it besiems us as true knights to prick on bravely not idly weep because we cannot now recall a new life begins for us with every second let us go forward joyously to meet it we must press on whether we will or know and we shall walk better with our eyes before us than with them ever cast behind a friend came to me the other day and urged me very eloquently to learn some wonderful system by which you never forgot anything I don't know why he was so eager on the subject unless it be that I occasionally borrow an umbrella and have a knack of coming out in the middle of a game of wist with a mild law I've been thinking all along that clubs were trumps I declined the suggestion however in spite of the advantages he so attractively set forth I have no wish to remember everything there are many things in most men's lives that are better be forgotten there is that time many years ago when we did not act quite as honourably quite as uprightly as we perhaps should have done that unfortunate deviation from the path of strict probity we once committed and in which more unfortunate still we were found out that act of folly, of meanness, of wrong ah well, we paid the penalty suffered the maddening hours of vain remorse the hot agony of shame the scorn perhaps of those we loved let us forget oh father time lift with your kindly hands those bitter memories from off our overburdened hearts for griefs are ever coming to us with the coming hours and our little strength is only as the day not that the past should be buried the music of life will be mute if the chords of memory were snapped asunder it is but the poisonous weeds not the flowers that we should root out from the garden of Nemocene we remember Dickon's haunted man how he prayed for forgetfulness and how when his prayer was answered he prayed for memory once more we do not want all the ghosts laid it is only the haggard cruel eyed specters that we flee from let the gentle kindly phantoms haunt us as they will we are not afraid of them the world grows very full of ghosts as we grow older we need not seek in dismal church yards nor sleep in motored granges to see the shadowy faces and hear the rustling of their garments in the night every house, every room, every creaking chair has its own particular ghost they haunt the empty chambers of our lives they throng around us like dead leaves whirled in the autumn wind some are living, some are dead we know not we clasped their hands once, loved them quarreled with them, laughed with them told them our thoughts and hopes and aims as they told us theirs till it seemed our very hearts had joined in a grip that would defy the puny power of death they are gone now, lost to us forever their eyes will never look into ours again and their voices we shall never hear only their ghosts come to us and talk with us we see them dim and shadowy through our tears we stretch our yearning hands to them but they are air ghosts they are with us night and day they walk beside us in the busy street under the glare of the sun they sit by us in the twilight at home we see their little faces looking from the windows of the old school house we meet them in the woods and lanes where we shouted and played as boys Hark! cannot you hear their low laughter from behind the blackberry bushes and their distant whoops along the grassy glades? down here through the quiet fields and by the wood where the evening shadows are lurking winds the path where we used to watch for her at sunset look, she's there now in the dainty white frock we knew so well with the big bonnet dangling from her little hands and the sunny brown hair all tangled five thousand miles away dead for all we know what of that? she is beside us now and we can look into her laughing eyes and hear her voice and the shadows will creep out across the fields and the night wind will sweep past moaning ghosts they are always with us and always will be while the sad old world keeps echoing to the sob of long goodbyes while the cruel ships sail away across the great seas and the cold green earth lies heavy on the hearts of those we loved but oh, ghosts the world would be sadder still without you come to us and speak to us oh, you ghosts of our old loves ghosts of playmates and of sweethearts and old friends of all you laughing boys and girls oh, come to us and be with us for the world is very lonely and new friends and faces are not like the old and we cannot love them, nay, nor laugh with them as we have loved and laughed with you and when we walked together, oh, ghosts of our youth the world was very gay and bright but now it has grown old and we are growing weary and only you can bring the brightness and the freshness back to us memory is a rare ghost-raiser like a haunted house its walls are ever echoing to unseen feet through the broken casements we watch the flitting shadows of the dead and the saddest shadows of them all are the shadows of our own dead selves all those young bright faces so full of truth and honour of pure good thoughts of noble longings how reproachfully they look upon us with their deep clear eyes I fear they have good cause for their sorrow, poor lads lies and cunning and disbelief have crept into our hearts in those pre-shaving days and we meant to be so great and good it is well we cannot see into the future there are few boys of fourteen who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty I like to sit and have a talk sometimes with that odd little chap that was myself long ago I think he likes it too for he comes so often of an evening when I am alone with my pipe listening to the whispering of the flames I see his solemn little face looking at me through the scented smoke as it floats upward and I smile at him and he smiles back at me but his is such a grave old-fashioned smile we chat about old times and now and then he takes me by the hand and then we slip through the black bars of the great and down the dusky glowing caves to the land that lies behind the firelight there we find the days that used to be and we wander along them together he tells me as we walk all he thinks and feels I laugh at him now and then but the next moment I wish I had not for he looks so grave I am ashamed of being frivolous besides it is not showing proper respect to one so much older than myself to one who was myself so very long before I became myself we don't talk much at first but look at one another I down at his curly hair and little blue bow he up sideways at me as he trots and somehow I fancy the shy round eyes do not altogether approve of me and he heaves a little sigh as though he were disappointed but after a while his bashfulness wears off and he begins to chat he tells me his favourite fairy tales he can do up to six times and he has a guinea pig and Pa says fairy tales ain't true and isn't it a pity because he would so like to be a knight and fight a dragon and marry a beautiful princess but he takes a more practical view of life when he reaches seven and would prefer to grow up to be a bar G and earn a lot of money maybe this is the consequence of falling in love which he does about this time with the young lady at the milk shop at the age of six God bless her little ever-dancing feet whatever size they may be now he must be very fond of her for he gives her one day his chiefest treasure a witt, a huge pocket knife with four rusty blades and a corkscrew which latter has a knack of working itself out in some mysterious manner and sticking into its owner's leg she is an affectionate little thing and she throws her arms round his neck and kisses him for it then and there outside the shop but the stupid world in the person of the boy at the cigar emporium next door jeers at such tokens of love whereupon my young friend very properly prepares to punch the head of the boy at the cigar emporium next door but fails in the attempt the boy at the cigar emporium next door punching his instead and then comes school life with its bitter little sorrows and its joyous shoutings its jolly larks and its hot tears falling on beastly Latin grammars and silly old copy books it is at school that he injures himself for life as I firmly believe trying to pronounce German and it is there too that he learns of the importance attached by the French nation to pens, ink and paper have you pens, ink and paper is the first question asked by one Frenchman of another on their meeting the other fellow has not any of them as a rule but says that the uncle of his brother has got them all three the first fellow doesn't appear to care a hang about the uncle of the other fellow's brother what he wants to know now is has the neighbour of the other fellow's mother got him the neighbour of my mother has no pens, no ink and no paper replies the other man beginning to get wild has the child of thy female gardener some pens, some ink or some paper he has him there after worrying enough about these wretched inks, pens and paper to make everybody miserable it turns out that the child of his own female gardener hasn't any such a discovery would shut up anyone but a French exercised man it has no effect at all though on this shameless creature he never thinks of apologising but says his aunt has some mustard so in the acquisition of more or less useless knowledge soon happily to be forgotten boyhood passes away the red brick school house fades from view and we turn down into the world's high road my little friend is no longer little now the short jacket has sprouted tails the battered cap so useful as a combination of pocket handkerchief drinking cup and weapon of attack has grown high and glossy and instead of a slate pencil in his mouth there is a cigarette the smoke of which troubles him for it will get up his nose he tries a cigar a little later on as being more stylish a big black Havana it doesn't seem altogether to agree with him for I find him sitting over a bucket in the back kitchen afterward solemnly swearing never to smoke again and now his moustache begins to be almost visible to the naked eye whereupon he immediately takes to brandy and sodas and fancies himself a man he talks about two to one against the favourite refers to actresses as little Emmy and Kate and baby and murmurs about his losses at cards the other night in a style implying that thousands have been squandered though to do him justice the actual amount is most probably one and tuppence also if I see a right for it is always twilight in this land of memories he sticks an eyeglass in his eye and stumbles over everything his female relations much troubled at these things pray for him bless their gentle hearts and see visions of old Bailey trials and halters as the only possible outcome of such reckless dissipation and the prediction of his first schoolmaster that he would come to a bad end assumes the proportions of inspired prophecy he has a lordly contempt at this age for the other sex a blatantly good opinion of himself and a sociably patronising manner toward all the elderly male friends of the family altogether it must be confessed he is somewhat of a nuisance about this time it does not last long though he falls in love in a little while and that soon takes the bounce out of him I notice his boots are much too small for him now and his hair is fearfully and wonderfully arranged he reads poetry more than he used and he keeps a rhyming dictionary in his bedroom every morning Emily Jane finds scraps of torn-up paper on the floor and reads there on of cruel hearts and love's deep darts of beautyous eyes and lover's sighs and much more of the old old song that lads so love to sing and lassies love to listen to while giving their dainty heads a toss and pretending never to hear the course of love however seems not to have run smoothly for later on he takes more walking exercise and less sleep poor boy than is good for him and his face is suggestive of anything but wedding bells and happiness ever after and here he seems to vanish the little boyish self that has grown up beside me as we walked is gone I am alone and the road is very dark I stumble on I know not how nor care for the way seems leading nowhere and there is no light to guide but at last the morning comes and I find that I have grown into myself End of section 14 End of Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome


The Germans call it vulture bin, meaning death of the forests. All over the world, large wooded areas, once lush and green, are now sickly and gray. Seeking reasons for this dramatic decline, scientists, including a group from NASA, have been studying the problem on Camelshump Mountain in Vermont. This photograph was taken from Camelshump in 1963. Here's what this same area looked like 20 years later. To find out why, NASA researchers have been gathering samples of dying trees on various parts of the mountain. There you go. Yeah, look at the chlorosis on this one. These samples, bagged and labeled in the field, were later be analyzed in area laboratories. One theory why forests are dying is what's popularly referred to as acid rain. Pollutants caused by the burning of fossil fuels get into the atmosphere, are moved around our planet by air currents, and fall back to Earth in the rain, absorbed by plants and trees. Based on their analysis of the samples collected on Camelshump, NASA scientists are not convinced that acid rain is the sole cause of the problem. But they do think it's a factor. Dr. Barry Rock explained. Some rainfall measurements on Camelshump have been just horrendous. We're approaching vinegar, we're approaching battery acid in terms of the acidity. Certainly that's got to have some effect on vegetation. Specially equipped air plant and satellites are also being used in the investigation to produce imagery of the study sites. Because the health of a plant or tree determines how it shows up in these images, they provide a very accurate way of discovering, mapping and monitoring damaged areas. NASA scientists now plan to use even more advanced airborne instruments to detect the very first stages of forest decline before it becomes obvious. Then we have some hope of being able to treat the patient before it is terminally ill. Small Vermont sawmills and the worldwide lumber industry in general could soon begin feeling the impact of bolstering. But as Dr. Rock points out, the problem really goes beyond economic concerns. The spruce trees on Camelshump and in the black forest are very sensitive indicators of stress and they may well end up being the canary in the mine shaft. And since we can't easily get out of our particular mine shaft, we're going to have to start looking at means of improving the atmospheric conditions. NASA's damage assessment effort, looking at the trees to save the forests.


Great. Welcome to the last set news. Take a top story as in crypto or not a bite-sized piece. So today's the thumbnail and title suggests there is a meeting coming up. It's actually the Fed Reserve meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And I think you should probably pay attention to it to see exactly what's going to happen with the markets in the short term. So we'll take a look at why that meeting is so important and actually how history has treated the announcements coming out of that meeting. Then we'll take a look at a China housing loan and bailout to the tune of $200 billion. And we'll also take a look at how housing supply and recession seem to go hand in hand. And we'll take a look at how Michael Burry sold everything about a week ago and why, even though that Michael Burry may have gotten one thing right in 2008, doesn't mean he gets every single thing right and moving forward. And lastly, we'll take a look at some more macro concerns as well as a new Voyager buyout date coming up very quickly. So first things first, let's take a look at the markets. The market's boring. It's up 1.5%. Nothing to write home about, but Ethereum's up 4%. 24 hours, that's pretty good. But look at the seven-day, just abysmal. 11% down for Bitcoin, 14% down for Ethereum, 7% for Binance Coin, 17% for Cardano. Crazy. Almost 90%, 20% for Solana. And down you go. So we may make little recoveries here, bumps along the way. That's just how it is in bear markets. Just get ready for the exact same thing over the next two years. It's quite boring, but this is where all the money's made, unfortunately. That's just the truth. Also, how are we doing as far as correlation? Well, kind of, not really. S&P 500 is down a little bit, but what we're really usually correlated to is with NASDAQ and they're up about a quarter of a point, which is doing pretty good compared to us, or we're actually doing more better than them for 1.5%. So that's what's going on with the markets. Nothing to write home about. And then before we go on for the stories and Jackson Hole and Drum Powell and all that good stuff, I just wanted to just quickly talk about this. There was a question yesterday from the Poolman, which is pretty adequate for my show. But he says, what do you think about the advanced trade in Coinbase? I thought it was opening up later on, maybe in November or December, but it's here already.  It's already up and running. And it used to be Coinbase Pro. Now they just can find it together on the same site. And actually, I brought over a little bit of cash and crypto from my pro Coinbase account over to this one. Works pretty well. Pretty interesting. But that's not the most earth shattering news, honestly. What was interesting to me is because people were telling me just how great the spreads were and how the prices were and how they compared everywhere else. And I was like, I don't think that's true, but whatever. So I took a look at it and I just compared the prices. Now what I'm going to ask is for everybody to do the same thing because this is just one data point in a slew of multiple data points you can take a look at. So I just took a look at the Bitcoin price yesterday at 325 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. And for regular Coinbase, they quoted me a price of $21,205.22 per Bitcoin. But on Coinbase Advanced Trade, it was $21,094. That's a big difference. $21,094.62. That's a big difference. And then the fees, the estimated fee right here, less than a penny. So yeah, that's not too bad. Over here, Coinbase fee that you can see, it says free right there. That's just because I signed up for that $30 Coinbase. What is it? Coinbase one account where they waive all the fees.  And now let's take a look at FTX, just see what the prices were. And at the same time when I was doing this, they quoted me a price of $21,222.25, which is even more than Coinbase regular. So I know someone said, well, there's an FTX pro, and I don't have that. I don't know if you can get that in the States. I have no idea. I'm just lucky to have something in the States because I can't get the regular FTX, I got to use FTX US. That's just the prices that were quoted to me. So do me a favor. When you're out there in the wild and you're looking at the different exchanges, just shoot an image over on Twitter just to compare different prices. I'm just curious to see who has the best prices among all the exchanges. Okay, so that takes care of that little snippet. Now let's get into the Friday meeting. And we know the Fed, every time the Fed meets, everybody talks about it, especially on YouTube and Twitter. But there's no meeting this week or this month. The usual Fed meeting is nixed. And now they have just this impromptu Jackson Hole Wyoming meeting, which is coming up on, it actually starts on Thursday, and then it goes into Friday. And on Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern Center time, that is when Jerome Powell will speak. And I thought it was very interesting what this report said about just how potentially important that is. So this is what's going on. So this is why markets care so much about the Fed's annual Jackson Hole meeting. So every year, in August, the Federal Reserve holds a small gathering of the world's leading economists and polymakers against the backdrop of the Grand Teen Mountains in Wyoming. Only about 120 people attend the event every year, but the public release papers and speeches as well as media engagements by policymakers have made the Kansas City Fed's Economic Policy Symposium a landmark event for Fed watchers. The event's usually three days. It begins with a dinner on Thursday. Next morning kicks off with Jerome talking again at 10 a.m. But Fed chairs, aware of the heightened tension of used speeches at the Jackson Hole meeting to provide an economic update on the conditions and signal policy shifts ahead. The head of major central banks like the Bank of Japan, European Center Bank, Bank of England are familiar faces at the event. So that's where they all get together and pretty much plot their evil schemes. Now just kidding, that's what I get together to do the things. In 97, this is just an example. This is just an example of how tepid or how volatile markets are, just by a couple of people talking a little bit. In 97, then Fed chairman Alan Greensband made remarks while global markets fretted over a currency crisis in Asia. Greensband made a brief mention of Mexico. The Mexican stock market tumbling on fears the Fed chair was signaling a spillover in the global financial system. See, this is one of those things that I just, it's very hard to really bring together all this information and just go, well, there's just this guy and he's just going to talk and it's not going and everything's already priced in. I just don't think that's really how it is. I think there's still more of volatility out there, especially with, I mean, if Jerome Powell says anything a little bit odd about what's happening in the markets and what they potentially could do, then it just leads all the all the geniuses out there to start to talk about, well, if maybe by this and maybe by that, and you also have to remember one more big thing, which is what I think really all comes down to is this. There's a website. I don't know if you've heard about it. Danteachescrypt.com. 100% free. It's always free. Good stuff. Best stuff I can, I've figured out over the last couple of years or since 2017. And in module three, if you scroll down, this is a good one right here, have a plan, five year mistakes, all this stuff. But the very last one, it talks about, it's the bot effect, and it's about six minutes long. And really what it just talks about is just, and this isn't from me.  So if you don't think that the market is volatile or is rational, the market is not rational. And that's why when people talk about trading and doing these things, I'm like, I just don't have the patience for it. And especially with the way that people react in the market, I just don't see the whole point of where it could actually go. Anyhow, that's just what I got. Just expect some volatility on Thursday, around 10 Eastern time, probably you'll go down a little bit. And if you're maybe at the right time, right place, right time, maybe you could buy up some cheap alts or maybe some cheap Bitcoin and whatever else you want to do. Not financial advice, not a financial advisor. Anyhow, the major thing about that in the comment section, let's move on to this little issue, the Chinese housing market. And this is going to get, we're going to go a little bit down a rabbit hole, but just the truth. So this is from Zero Hedge. China launches a 200 billion yuan bailout of their reeling housing sector. I didn't know this, but the Chinese property market is likely the largest asset class in the world. In here in this dark purple or blue whatever it is, that's residential property. So in China, this is in trillions. They have invested $62 trillion into residential property. In America, which we talk so much about, it's half, roughly 34 trillion, Japan 10 trillion, UK 10 trillion, Australia $6 trillion. Then you got fixed income in gray and latter gray and equity. That's a lot of cash tied up into property in one country. Here's what's happening. In its latest show of a not a bailout support for its beleaguered property sector, Beijing will offer 200 billion, excuse me, yuan in special loans to ensure stalled housing projects are delivered to buyers. If you're not up to speed with this one, it's okay. A lot of things are going on. But what these developers are doing is they're doing a Ponzi scheme, essentially. They're borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and they're saying, Hey, do you want a new house or new property or whatever else it is? Sure. Sign up right here. It gives a down payment. We'll start in. And as soon as they do that, they finish up the old houses that they have. And then now there's like a gap. And that's what's been going on with especially these these run the banks here in China and people just aren't trusting what's going on. So it's gotten so bad, but government had to step in. Does that sound like any other country that would do that? Just saying. So since all banks in China are state owned, this is effectively the start of the latest housing market bailout. So how bad could it get? I have no idea. It could get kind of bad. Maybe this could all work out. Maybe they could pay paid the builders and go, Here's your 200 billion yuan. Make sure everybody gets their houses and everything works without without a problem. I mean, it could. I don't know. I mean, who knows? It could actually do it. But there is one thing that that does concern me about housing supply and recessions. This was a snippet from silver trade. It talks about the monthly supply of new houses in the US. And one thing you want to notice is that you might notice these dates around 1980, 91, 2008, 2022. You see how there's this this this vast monthly supply of new houses, almost 11. 11 monthly supplies, 11 supplies of monthly new housing noise, 11 months. And if you take this graph here, that means that there's a lot of supply, not so much demand, probably because the Fed's doing their job. They're raising the rates and people like can't afford that. And they have to back out of their their approved loans and go, Well, sorry, just that's how much I make. And I can't afford that now. So if you take this and overlay the monthly supply of new houses, this is the St. Louis Fed Reserve, the dates of the US recession as inferred by GDP based recession indicators. Remember when we used to say that two quarters of economic decline or GDP decline is a recession? Those are good days. Now who knows what it is. But you'll notice that there's some interesting dates along this continuum. And just to make this very simple, I overlaid them to show you that it seems like when there's a vast supply of houses, or there's foreclosures, or there's just fall through for contracts. It seems like it kind of leads us into some sort of recession. Now there's a, I was watching KITCO news was on that, but they talked about there was, there was two indicators that really leads us into leads us in and out of a recession. One is the automobile industry. And the second one is real estate. I gotta tell you, it kind of concerns me to see these types of supply being hit. Now, things could even out, could work out okay. So we'll see how it goes. But it is interesting that we got a bailout in China. We've got more houses available in the US, which is rightfully so, but just a large number of those. And just I'm sure about how that'll affect everything moving forward. I just don't know if that's like the greatest thing of all time. Now, let me know what you think about that in the comments. And then real quickly, I keep getting this question about Michael Burry, how he sold everything. And if you don't know Michael Burry from the big short, he was a guy that's pretty much short of the whole markets and made away with a ton of money and good for him. So he was right in 2008. And he just sold all of the stocks about seven days ago or so, except for one company called the ticker is Geo, which I believe is incarceration prison systems and saying with mental health facilities. So he sold everything. And here he is, which is kind of alarming. I mean, I'll be honest with you from a guy who who got something so right, but just remember this. And I'm not going to read this because it's super long. I've linked it in the in the description. 10 times Michael Burry's market crash and other predictions were totally incorrect. A couple of them were Tesla. A couple of them were when recessions were and we're not going to happen. And CDOs, subprime CDOs and others, different things, you can read it at your leisure, but just I just want to make mention of this. This because somebody gets something right once doesn't mean they get everything right all the time. I'm wrong quite a bit. And sometimes I get some things right, but just remember one thing. This is from Peter Lynch. Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections or trying to anticipate corrections that has been lost in corrections themselves. Do I think that we're not headed for a vast economic downturn? Maybe. And only time will tell, but again, was this the right time to sell all your stock? Well, for Michael Burry it was. Anyhow, let me just think about that and then we'll finish up with just a couple of more macro concerns that are just kind of hovering around. I'm an American if you can't tell, and I'll talk about U.S. all the time, but in the U.S., we got quite a problem with the deficit. And if you see here on the left hand side, this is the revenue individual income taxes. This is in billions. Social Security Medicare taxes 1.2 trillion, 372 billion corporate income tax. That's not that much corporate income tax. Mr. Lynch revenue, custom exclusions and retirements. And here's what we spend. We love to spend here in America. Here's income security, social security, health, national defense. Wow, look at that. 755 billion. You think it'd be more. Medicare, net interests, commerce and housing credit education. And of course, we're in the hole right now. And it's just been like that forever. I don't know if we can, how long we can keep doing this. Another macro event that I've been asking people on Twitter is, if they can confirm this, these are the electricity prices in Europe. And not only in Europe, but I mean, I've noticed like here in Texas, my bill has doubled just for electricity. It's been a pretty darn hot summer so far. But you can see like with this one, this is from Alf, follow him, macro insights have asked my ideas, macro compass newsletter for my $20 billion portfolio. And he just puts it out. He goes, look, almost the entire European continent is now operating at electricity prices above 600 megawatts per hour. That's roughly equivalent to $1,000 per barrel of oil. And you can see right here, and I've asked people if this is actually true and I've gotten responses from people from the UK, from Spain, from France, even Germany, a couple of them pulling, they say, yeah, our prices are through the roof. And a lot of those were small business owners and they were even questioning if they were able to keep their businesses open with just this glut of electricity use and prices. So that's quite a concern. And then just to finish up, if you didn't know, I just figured this out. DJ Crypto, I mean, let me know on this one that a Voyager is up for sale. Nice little bidding wars going on apparently. The bid deadline, which apparently they have multiple bidders, not just like FTX. That was like low ball offer. But the original deadline for this was August 26. I was pretty jacked about that. I was like, oh, it's going to happen like the other month. We're going to figure out what's going to happen with Voyager. Who's going to buy it? What's going to happen to the investors? But I don't know if they have a lot more or something, hopefully, but the original deadline was August 26. Now it's September 6. So just so you know, if you're waiting for that, like I was, looks like it's going to be a little bit later. And that's it for the news. So look, that concludes the news section. Knows a little bit long, a lot of things going on. If you like today's video, give it a thumbs up, consider subscribing, although you don't really have to. It's not like YouTube is going to go and notify you anyhow. It's like only happens like 50% of the time. But if you do, it'd be great. Now we'll get into the Q&A section.  Thanks for coming by. I appreciate it. But if you want to stick around, I'll answer all your questions, the best of my abilities, and we will go from there as we get into the Q&A. So let's jump into it.


link right here. Hope you got informed in our previous interview and this one is for those ones planning to get interrelationships or interrelationships, right? So I have a guest who was dedicated his life to transforming lives and speaking about relationships and encouraging, equipping and empowering lives to unmask the potential to operate in the area of Papus. Quite deep right there and this is in the back end of his brand new book before you think of dating. He goes by the name Alan Lawrence, Karibusana. Yes sir, thank you so much. Your camera is number four. I know you have a lot of AKs that you'd like to share with us. So just introduce yourself briefly. Wow. My introduction is very simple. My name is Alan Lawrence.  I'm a man who wants to one day when I die let people remember me not for the suits I wear, not for the things I have done but the impact I've left on the earth. The impact you've left on the earth. Yes. And today I think you're going to leave some impact on this show for sure. Yes. First before we get into discussing this amazing book and I love the cover. Thank you so much. Are you in a relationship Mr. Alan Lawrence? Yes, I'm in a relationship, a serious relationship. For how long have you been in a relationship? A serious relationship for now about four years. For four years now. All right, I was dating a critic of relationships like you. That is a question I should be losing to Alan Lawrence. If you're watching, I'd like to know how it is dating a relationship critic like Alan. Let's get into this book. It's better to wait other than waste. Remember no relationship will never leave you neutral. It will either buy something out of you or sell something into you. Very deep words right there. Yes. What did this come from? Broken relationship or a broken heart? Not necessarily direct but indirect because I do counseling for a number of people. You come to realize that most of the people, they have not mapped their purpose. You get into a relationship because you want to fit in. Because your friends are dating you just want to fit in and you've not mapped your purpose. That is when I've said no relationship will ever leave you neutral. Like all of us, the producers and everyone here, there is a struggle we are going through. And this struggle, you look at it keenly, it was because of some wrong association and having unrealistic expectations on people. I think the first trouble starts with self, accepting self. That is when now you cannot relate with another person if you've not related with yourself. Because if you have issues with yourself, even you can get lost in a crowd of two people, yet you are the tallest one. So it takes you to have...  So if you are not okay or content with yourself, if you have not known yourself, you can get lost in a crowd of two people, however tall you are. All right. And a crowd of two people is a smart way of saying your relationship. Yes exactly. All right. So a lot of people get into relationships with a lot of expectations. Yes. That's why they end up being frustrated. So people get frustrated because of expectations. Expectations and realistic expectations. All right. We have something called standard. Kebs. How do you have standards without expectations? There's no... We can't have standards without expectations. Without expectations. Right. But it all begins, you know, like I always ask ladies for instance, you find a lady, once a guy who drives. No problem. That is a standard you've said to yourself. So the other day someone was saying, if you want a guy who drives, you will definitely find them where you parked your car. So it begins where you... Because it's the only way you're going to find other drivers if you're parking with them. Exactly. All right. So it's just like, you know, I cannot expect to have champagne on a changa baguette. It can never work. It can never work. Expectations are the first enemies of relationships. Exactly. All right. So many people have frequently been using dating as a rescue centers for themselves and they never are comfortable around themselves. That's why they end up dating wrongly. Many people are frequently be using dating as a rescue for themselves. All right. So what are people risking themselves from while they get into dating? All these problems that lead people into dating, thinking that dating is going to save them from it. They shouldn't one by one because I'm pretty sure it's affected most of us around here. I think the reason as to why people like, they are never comfortable around themselves because I will doubt you if you promise me something that you are not yourself. So it begins by you loving the person in the mirror. Because we can sit here. I can cheat on you. I can lie and speak a lot of things. But there is one person I can never like myself. That moment, am I comfortable? Am I realistic with myself? When I look myself in the mirror, once you are very much contented with yourself, you love yourself. That is where now you can promise another person to love another person. So people use dating as rescue mission in this sense whereby they are not contented staying around themselves. They have not mapped their purpose. Their validation comes from outside. But because your validation comes from inside, you will not even seek a relationship because you have an intimacy with yourself. That is when you can now confidently give love to another person. So you cannot pour from an empty cup. You cannot ever pour from an empty cup. Fill yourself. Fill yourself. That is when now you can promise another person love. So most people, they tend to run into relationships so that they can feel validated. Your value needs to come from within yourself. Today, for instance, someone will date another person just because they want to be associated with another person. But once you are like, I am contented with myself. So I always ask people, today if you are not dating that person, will your value remain? If you are not called me so and so, if you are not called that you are dating so and so, will your value remain as a person? But I think we are two in one. When we are two in one, there is no one for one. But now, let's be real, for instance, today you minus sex out of a relationship. Most of the people will remain single. That is a fact. Most of the people will remain single. So the value is what remains because a relationship can come and go. People can come and heartbreak you. But are you comfortable around yourself? Have you mapped your papa's? Can you wake up in the morning? There is a time even when I wake up, I don't want to hear anyone telling me I love you. But what will cement us together, what will keep me going is my papa's. So you need to find that papa's for us? Yes. Okay. So we often find ourselves in situations, I know myself, or you can never be 100%. Exactly. 98% knowing your papa's and knowing yourself where you are going. But you happen to meet this person, you fall in love with them, but they still have issues of their own. How do you deal with such a situation? Do you build the person, do you bring the person up or run away? Number one, relationship is not mentorship. So, you know, most of the people today, they are into relationship, they are thinking they are into relationship. But they are actually doing mentorship. So you cannot mentor someone. So you have to let this person grow. And I have a problem with most of the people who date below the age of 25 years. Why? Because at the age of 25 years, everyone is trying to experiment this and this and this. Like, if you find them in charge, they are like, you know, if you find them at work, they are so much enthusiastic. But at the age of 26 and above this person exactly, they are now narrowed down.  But below this age, they are trying to experiment. All right. So, below 25, cool her up. Like, find something, do something important to her. Leave your life. Leave your life. Better life. All right. And then after 25, you can start dating. Okay, but for ladies, I hear there's a clock. There's something called a biological clock. And you can't force somebody to wait for 26.  And she's back to her figure the way it was. People have different plans. So what do you have to say about that? Like, for me, that is when I've said love is never a feeling. It's a commitment. So you need to develop your brain to an extent that I've known what I'm signing up for. Because if someone today, you tell like, I always ask, you know, ladies do not have an option because they can never chase a man. It's as a man, as a man that do their hunting. But the ladies of nowadays, my friend. I know. But you see, you have to know really what are you signing up for. Like, ask this person, why do you love me? If this person cannot confidently answer the real answer to you that they love you for this reason.  A time is coming. Yeah, a time is coming. That is a time bomb. So this person you need to be realistic. It's not when you go out for those dates.  Apply lipsticks after every five minutes. It's about studying. Studying this person, try to like ask them intelligent questions. Like, what is your plan? In the next five months. If you do not feature anywhere in this plan, be sure that one is... You don't have to ask in the next ten years. Just ask in the next three months. Three months. Then you'll be able to know. That is when you can be able to know if you are going to be accommodated or just...  Alright, alright. So I'm told people experience emotions differently. People in the corporate world have a certain way. They are conforming to... In the artistic world, people express themselves differently. And even the conversations are different when it comes to matters relating to men and women. Do you think we can have one rulebook to tell us when to date and when not to date and how to do this? Because people are very complex and we are like seven billion of us. Exactly.  And for you to understand your love language, it takes you to have a relationship with yourself. Like, because in a relationship, if you take care of my love language for instance, if my love language is gifts, ensure that when you want to commit to another person ensure you communicate the language of gift. And be able to, like once you communicate the language of gift, do not have expectation in return. Alright, this is your way of expressing love. Express love. Try to figure out how this other person expressed their love. And measure. And measure. How much you are getting of it. Yeah, because, you know, for instance, let in the corporate world, people will take her as too serious, she cannot. But these people out here, they can be in that career, in that field. But the only thing they want, they want a guy who will make the girl in them come out. And for us men we want a lady who will make the boy in us. Because in every man there is too personality. There is a boy who wants to play and there is a king who wants to rule. So it depends who you approach in the man. You will get the response based on what you approach in a man. Even the ladies.  You give her anything, she will multiply it back to you.  You give her trouble. She will multiply and give you more trouble. So if you find your lady in a relationship, she is the one, like she's giving you something different. You have to consider what are you giving her. What are you giving her? So it's very important to find your love language first. Be very content with yourself and with yourself. Then and only then you are ready to date. Okay, so alright. Understand that when you rush into dating without understanding yourself and appreciating the person in the mirror, it's easier for you to crush. Alright, so people are crashing in relationships as we speak. Exactly. And it's hard to leave because of commitment. When it gets to this point where you're crashing but you took an oath to stay with this person or whatever you did, is it right to touch yourself till death? No, it's only a fool who does not change their mind. Okay, only fools don't change their minds. The mind is very dynamic. It's only in love that people become... Sometimes for lack of a better word, people become stupid for lack of a better word because that's the moment they are not even easy to think. You can easily commit to some things that you're not able even to adhere to them. But once you sit back and whatever has happened has happened, learn to forgive the person in the mirror. And the person in the mirror is you yourself. Forgive yourself and life has to move on. When I say ambulance in Afanyani, in Aliyah Lakinni, in Asongambeles, so if you are heartbroken, do not let the end of life. Okay, okay, so brave on. Keep moving. Yeah, we have good people out there. There's always somebody out there. There's always somebody out there for you. So it's all beginning, that particular moment, accept yourself, forgive yourself, and do not just use a blanket statement on everyone. So even it is a moment for you to check how the foundation of your dating is. And once you start dating on the right foundation, actually you'll attract the right people. Alright, for more information, you can find it in this book right here. Before you think of dating, do we have soft copies online? Yeah, we do. We have them online. I just talked to them straight, how they can get the physical copies and how they can get the soft copies. Thank you so much. You can reach us via my social media handles, Alan Lawrence on Facebook, on Instagram, that is Alan underscore 320. Then we will be able to direct you on Amazon. You can be able to reach us out, Alan Lawrence. And we can deliver the copies onto you. Alright, thank you very much, Mr. Alan. Thank you so much, sir. I'm really interested in the reading culture in our country, especially with the youth. I see our parents at least try because they read newspapers every day. But how is the reading culture in this country, especially for the young people, considering you're published a book so you can be a good gauge? Yeah, for me, the reading culture in Kenya is so nice. I've written an article somewhere and I said the reading culture is so nice. Why? Because everything rises and falls on leadership. So the kind of leadership, it is us to take that role and enlighten people. Because once you enlighten people, the importance of them reading, because the moment someone reads, you open your world. You open the way somebody reads, there is a way you have your reasoning capacity, your content pedagogy is on point. Your content, I know. Content pedagogy. So you get to that level whereby you instill the need in them that once you read, you become a better version of yourself because you suffer for your ignorance. Oh, right.  It's very important to read. And how do you build a reading culture as a person who has not read for the last six or four years after Form 4 listening to my channel now? How do you cultivate a reading culture in such a person? Where do you start? For me, what has really worked out is the moment you are tired, the moment you are tired, you are about to retire to bed. Just develop a culture of taking maximum 15 minutes. Read slowly, slowly, slowly. Within 21 days, you've developed a culture of reading and you need to have accountability, friends. And also you need to have mentors. In this generation we are living in, people are tormented because of lack of mentors. So the moment you have mentors, people will be able to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. So once you have those people who put you on top. I think we have the punchline. You need people who are going to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Mentorship is very important. I was talking to a mentor right before. I think you met him in Pale Vopa Reception, Mr. Khayyamba Head of the Department of Media in ZTECH. He was telling me that mentorship is very important and part and parcel of growth when it comes to any field. Exactly. But you know the problem these days, why even potential mentors are running? I've said this over and over. The generation we are living in, people are looking for endorsements and associations, not mentorship. Not mentorship. Mentorship. So a picture is enough. Exactly. So I get posted on Instagram. I was hanging out with Ngugi and Diogo Reina. So people are just looking for endorsements, they are looking for people like today, today if I'm a mentor of someone, I tell them that you know what, I need you to do this and this. All my mentors, I give them deadlines and I also have people who, because you can never be a person in leadership if you are not under leadership. So you need to have those people who will be able to challenge you. And let me talk to people who you look to some people like your mentors.  If you are only going to achieve the results your mentors achieved. You have to surpass. And how can you surpass? Go and research. Who mentors this mentor of yours? So start doing things. But going back. Going back. As also you move forward, do things going back. Yes. Do what Drake did to Lil Wayne. Exactly. All right. He's almost going to Jay-Z right there. All right. I have a lot of hip-hop fans. I understand that language. But thank you very much for coming through. Thank you so much for having me. You have really opened up a world that I never imagined existed. Thank you. And we really appreciate you for that. Just remind them your social media handles right there and how they can get a hold of the book again and then we can wrap up. You can get me on social media at Alan Lawrence that is on Facebook and on Instagram Alan underscore 320. Then we can be able to interact and get a number of my books. Till next time I've been yours truly Alan Lawrence. All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Alan Lawrence. And we have come to the end of this. I hope you got some insight today. I hope you learned something in the morning because Mondays are for mentorship and Mondays are for gentlemen as well. Thank you. As the queens wear it for Wednesday. Thank you very much for being part of this show right there as a viewer or as a member of the production team. We appreciate you. My name is by Moses or it's by more social media. Until next time.


Item number, SCP-044. Object class, safe. Special containment procedures. A constant stream of hydrogen ions, unbound oxygen atoms, and other trace-free radicals emanate from the muzzle of SCP-044 at all times. Because of this, the docking stations of SCP-044 are to be well ventilated to keep dangerous gases and moisture from accumulating. Muzzle coverings are to be fitted at all times to keep birds and small animals from investigating the large open barrel of SCP-044. Addendum. As SCP-044 has not been involved in any significant accidents in the years that has been held by the Foundation, SCP-044 has been reclassified as safe. Must I really define significant incidents? If containment procedures and standard safety protocols are followed, SCP-044 appears to be no more dangerous than any other big gun. No, the bear incident does not count. O5. Description. SCP-044 is a howitzer, secretly manufactured in the late stages of the Second World War by Krupp engineers, personally supervised by Albert Speer, German Minister of Armaments and War Production under Adolf Hitler. SCP-044 is unique, not only because of its size, 251,000 kilograms or 251 metric tons, but also because it fires unconventional artillery using an atypical delivery method. Rather than having a breach for loading shells, the rear of the barrel is configured into a massive air compression chamber. Any object or pile of objects that fit may be loaded into SCP-044's muzzle to be used as ammunition. Because of its size, SCP-044 must remain rail-mounted and requires two freight locomotives to move. Researchers believe that SCP-044 weakens molecular and atomic bonds and any material loaded into its muzzle. However, the method by which SCP-044 affects molecular bonds is not known, due primarily to the numerous complex mechanisms that compose the housing and workings of SCP-044. In fact, some mechanisms appear useless and seem to do nothing other than spin or make noise, even when SCP-044 is not supplied with power. Both equipment and personnel have been lost while exploring the inside of SCP-044's barrel. When SCP-044 is fired, all matter within its barrel is ejected at a high rate of speed as a glowing red slug, proportional in size to the amount of mass loaded into the muzzle. Upon striking a solid object or the ground, the slug explodes with a yield proportional to the mass of the original ammunition at no less than a 0% mass-to-energy conversion rate. The yield will also increase somewhat the longer the slug remains in the barrel. The greatest known yield was achieved when the administrator's 8,900 kilogram or 19,500 pound personal diesel pickup truck was loaded in its entirety into the muzzle of SCP-044 and fired in the pictured experiment. Lesson complete, if you missed the previous orientation, go watch SCP-043, the beetle, right now. Or for the complete course, watch this playlist.