I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got turned up St.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it. I got down the book, and read all I came to read and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. “I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. Night's heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but angels of God.” Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone. He then goes on to relate that Carl Hentschel ('Harris') was accused of being a German during the First World War (he was actually a Pole), that George Wingrave ('George') went on to become a bank manager, and that he wrote the book after returning from his honeymoon.“The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. The narrator talks about the book's original appearance in Home Chimes and the excision of the serious travelogue parts by the magazine's editor.

Although the film follows the book's plot faithfully, it ends with an epilogue about the real-world events that shaped it. The film is narrated in first-person by Curry playing Jerome. Michael Palin appeared in this film just as he was establishing his post- Monty Python career, and the film has 'glints of Python-like silliness throughout'. It is based on the 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Three Men in a Boat is a 1975 BBC comedy film adapted by Tom Stoppard, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Tim Curry, Michael Palin, and Stephen Moore.

Three men in a boat jerome k