Three Men in a Boat a typical boating holiday of the time in a Thames camping skiff. This was just after commercial boat traffic on the Upper Thames had died out, replaced by the 1880s craze for boating as a leisure activity. Following the overwhelming success of "Three Men in a Boat", Jerome later published a sequel, about a cycling tour in Germany, titled "Three Men on the Bummel" (also known as "Three Men on Wheels", 1900). The story begins by introducing George, Harris, Jerome (always referred to as "J."), and Jerome's dog, named Montmorency. The men are spending an evening in J.'s room, smoking
Three Men on the Bummel or Academic fencing. The mensur sword duels are described at length, with little humour, and with Jerome expressing extreme disapproval for the tradition. Jerome would have been aware of Mark Twain's humorous travelogue, "A Tramp Abroad" (1880), based on a walking tour through similar parts of Germany, with extensive comments on the language and culture. "Three Men on the Bummel" follows in this vein. At least one of Jerome's remarks, however, is remarkably prescient: Jeremy Nicholas says that the book is "unfairly chastised as being an ineffectual afterthought" to "Three Men in a Boat", and that "the set pieces (the