Funny stories / Сборник лучших смешных рассказов. Уровень 2. Сборник

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      Why we hate the foreigner

      Jerome K. Jerome

      The advantage of the foreigner is following: he is born good. He does not have to try to be good, as we, the Englishmen, do. He does not have to start the New Year with the decision to be good, and succeed till the middle of January. He is just good all the year round. When they tell a foreigner to mount or descend from a tram[44] from the right side, he will never try to descend that tram from the left side.

      In Brussels[45] once I saw a lawless foreigner who was trying to enter a tram from the wrong side. The door was open: he was standing close beside it. A line of traffic was in his way, so he just entered when the conductor was not looking, and took his seat. The astonishment of the conductor was immense. How did he get there?

      The conductor was watching the proper entrance, and the man had not passed him. Later, the true explanation came to the conductor, but he hesitated to accuse that man of such crime.

      Anyway, the conductor appealed to the passenger himself. Was his presence a miracle or a sin? The passenger confessed. The conductor requested him to leave the tram immediately. The passenger refused to do so, a halt was called[46], and the police arrived. As usual, they appeared from the ground[47]. At first the sergeant did not believe the conductor’s statement. Myself, in the passenger’s case[48], I would lie. But he was proud, or stupid-one of the two, and he told the truth. The police said that he had to descend immediately and wait for the next tram. Other policemen were arriving from every corner: nowhere to run. The passenger decided get down. He walked to the proper door, but that was not correct. He had mounted the wrong side, he must descend on the wrong side, too. After that the conductor told a sermon from the centre of the tram on the danger of going from the wrong side.

      There is a law in Germany-an excellent law it is-that nobody may scatter paper about the street. An English military friend told me that, one day in Dresden[49], he tore a long letter into some fifty fragments and threw them behind him. A policeman stopped him and explained to him quite politely the law. My military friend agreed that it was a very good law, thanked the man for his information, and said that for the future he would bear it in mind[50]. But the policeman was not satisfied. He offered my friend to pick up those fifty pieces of paper. My friend did not see himself, an English General, on his hands and knees in the main street of Dresden, in the middle of the afternoon, picking up paper.

      The German policeman agreed that the situation was awkward. If the English General cannot accept it there is an alternative: to accompany the policeman to the nearest prison, three miles away. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, the judge probably went away. But the prison cells[51] are very comfortable, and the policeman is sure that the General, after the fine of forty marks[52], will be a free man again tomorrow. The General suggested to hire a boy to pick up the paper.

      The policeman answered that it was not be permitted.

      “I did not think,” my friend told me, “that picking up small pieces of thin paper off greasy stones was the hardest business of mine! It took me nearly ten minutes, and more than a thousand people enjoyed the view. But, anyway, it is a good law, I say.”

      Once I accompanied an American lady to a German Opera House[53]. The spectators in the German Schauspielhaus

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