A sense of humour
The author of story “A SENSE OF HUMOUR” is Jerome K. Jerome. The first part deals with description, what they were a highly cultured party ,all except two students who had just returned from Germany. They were too clever students. They played pieces from the old German masters, discussed philosophy,etc.
Then the author relate that two young men got up and asked them if they had ever heard Herr Slossenn Boschen sing his great German comic song. It was the funniest song. Young men said it was so funny that, when Herr Slossenn Boschen had sung it once before the German Emperor, he had to be carried off to bed. They longed to hear it, that wanted a good laugh. Herr Slossenn Boschen was quite pleased to sing it. The prelude didn't suggest a comic song exactly, but they thought that it was the German method, and prepared to enjoy it. author don't understand German, so he watched the two students, and followed them. Other people also smiled when the young men smiled, and laughed when the young men laughed. And yet that German Professor didn't seem happy. As they continued to laugh, his surprise turned into indignation. They said it was the funniest thing ever heard in all our lives. And they asked the Professor why he did not translate the song into English, so that common people could understand it, and hear what a real comic song was like. Then Herr Slossenn Boschen got up and began to swear at us in German. He said he had never been so insulted in all his life.
The final part ends, what the song was not comic at all. It was one of the most tragic songs in the German language. Slossenn Boschen had sung it once before the German Emperor, and he had cried like a little child. It was a difficult situation for them. Author haven't taken much interest in german songs since then.
The plot of the text consists in the party description, and erroneous belief that the tragical song is comic, because of not understanding.
The author’s communicative aim is to explain to readers that it is not necessary to believe that others speak and to repeat after them, each person should have a opinion, against all the odds(несмотря ни на что).
The subject matter of the text: the author feel ashamed for two young men, that has believed that it and did too, as they, has got to a difficult situation not only from not knowledge of German, but also from trust to strangers. Arouses in us a feeling of regret, sympathy. The subject matter of the article is tragic.
The author encourage to concern with a great attention people, to look narrowly and have the opinion that then it was not a shame and it is heavy.
I share the author’s opinion.
LOOKING BACK ON EIGHTY YEARS
(After S Maugham)
IIn my long life I have seen many changes in our habits and customs. The world I entered when at the age of eighteen I became a medical student was a world that knew nothing of planes, motor-cars, movies, radio or telephone. When I was still at school a lecturer came to Canterbury and showed us boys a new machine which reproduced the human voice. It was the first gramophone. The world I entered was the world that warmed itself with coal fires, lit itself by gas and paraffin lamps, and looked upon a bathroom as a luxury out of the reach.
On Sundays the muffin man made his rounds ringing his melancholy bell and people came out of their doors to buy muffins and crumpets1 for afternoon tea.
It was a very cheap world. When I entered St. Thomas's Hospital I took a couple of furnished rooms for which I paid 18s a week2. My landlady provided me with a solid breakfast before I went to the hospital and high tea- when I came back at half-past six. and the two meals cost me about 12s a week.
1 had enough money to go to the theatre at least once a week. The pit, to which I went, was not the orderly thing it is now. There were no queues. The crowd collected at the doors, and when they were opened there was a struggle, with a lot of pushing and elbowing and shouting to get a good place. But that was part of the fun.
Travelling was cheap, too, in those days. When I was twenty I went to Italy by myself for the six weeks of the Easter vacation. I went to Pisa3 and spent a wonderful month in Florence4: then I went to Venice'' and Milan7 and so back to London.
I spent five years at St. Thomas's Hospital. I was an unsatisfactory medical student, for my heart was not in it. I wanted, I had always wanted, to be a writer, and in the evening, after my tea, 1 wrote and read.
I wrote a novel, called Liza of Lambeth, sent it to a publisher, and it was accepted. It appeared during my last year at the hospital and had something of a success. It was of course an accident, but naturally 1 did not know that. I felt I could afford to chuck5' medicine and make writing my profession; so three days after passing the final examinations which gave me my medical qualifications, I set out for Spain to learn Spanish andwrite another book. Looking back now, after these years, and knowing as 1 do the terrible difficulties of making a living by writing, I realise that I was taking fearful risk, i abandoned the medical profession with relief, but 1 do not regret the five years 1 spent at the hospital, far from it6.
They taught me pretty well7 all I know about human nature. People in pain, people in fear of death, do not try to hide anything from their doctor, and if they do he can generally guess what they are hiding.
The next ten years were very hard. I did not follow up my first success with another. I wrote several novels, only one of which had any merit, and I wrote a number of plays which managers more or less promptly returned to me.
Then I had a bit of luck.8 The lessee and manager of the Court Theatre. Sloane Square, put on a play that failed. He read a play of mine, called Lady Frederick* and thought he did not much like it, thought it might just run for the six weeks. It ran for fifteen months.