Great Scenes from Great Novels - Uncle Podger Hangs a Picture - Jerome K. Jerome (Abridged and Simplified)

Great Scenes from Great Novels - Uncle Podger Hangs a Picture 
Jerome K. Jerome 

(Abridged and Simplified)

You never saw such a commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would have come from the frame - makers. Aunt Podger would want to know what to do that. 

At this, uncle Podger would say: "Oh, you leave that to me. Don't you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I'll do all that".

And then he would take off his coat to shoulder the responsibility. He would send one of the girls to buy nails for six pence. He would next send a boy to tell her the correct size; and from that he would gradually work down, and start the whole house. 

'Now you go and get me my hammer, Will; he would shout; and bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the stepladder, and I had better have a kitchen chair, too; and Jim!. You run around to Mr. Goggles and borrow a spirit - level from him. 
And don't you go, Maria, because I shall want somebody to hold me the light; and when the girl comes back with the nails, she must go out again to get a bit of string; and Tom! - where's Tom? Tom you come here; I shall want you to hand me the picture'.

And then he would lift the picture, and drop it, and it would come out of the frame and he would try to save the glass, and cut himself. Then he would spring round the room, looking for his handkerchief. 

He could not find his handkerchief because it was in his coat pocket. He did not know where he had put the coat, and the whole house started to look for his coat. 

Meanwhile, Uncle would dance round and hinder them. He would blame the children as lazy and useless. Then he would discover that all the while he had been sitting on the coat.

And when half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new glass had been got; and the tools, and the ladder, and the chair, and the candle had been brought, he would renew his effort with a team of his young assistants. Two people would help him up at hold him, and a fourth would hand him a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold of the nail and drop it. "There!", he would say in an injured tone, 'now the nail's gone".

And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it, while he would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if he was to be kept there all the evening.

The nail would be found at last, but by that time he would have lost the hammer.

'Where's the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great heavens! Seven of you, gaping round there, and you don't know what I did with the hammer!.

We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lost sight of the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in, and each see if we could find it; and we would each discover it in a different place, and he would call us fools one after another, and tell us to get down. 

He would take measurement and get a headache calculating the correct position for the picture. The scale and string would be tried in turn. In the process uncle would fall from the chair on to the piano producing strange notes. The language following the music would be unprintable.

And Aunt Maria would say that he would not allow the children to stand round and hear such language,

Uncle would rise up to renew his efforts again. He would get the spot fixed again, and the point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his right hand. And, with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop the hammer, with a yell, on the toe of the servant - maid.

And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow, the nail would go clean through the plaster. Half the hammer would get into the wall. Uncle too would fall on the wall. He would bump his face against the wall and his nose would almost be flattened.

Then the efforts would be renewed with the same confusion and fuss. But about midnight the picture would be hung on the wall very safe and crooked.

The wall in the room would bear plenty of nails and hammer marks. Uncle would proudly say that he had done it all by himself unlike some who would employ a man for it.

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