The Bottle Himp.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 213, 30 July 1887, Page 3

The Bottle Himp.

"How is it I'm loafing about, 'arc! up as you may say ? Do I feel my position ? Of course 1 do. I feels it keenly ;" and well the speaker might, for tho cast wind was sharpening itself on his skeleton shins and the slouchy-looking object before mo tried to make a" too scanty coat come up to the button-hole scratch. Failing in this attem2>t, he made his two lingers a temporary link, and held the restive garment together. " Well, I won't deceive you, guflPner, it wa-» all through the Bottle Himp, cuss him ! You'll excuse me, gulfner, but when I thinks how a human being Avas blasted in one night, as you may say, I make use of bad language, '' Pulling himself together, fcho speaker continued in a dismal dirge-like drawl to allude to himself a*, if ho had been a human cabbage stalk or a gentlemanly gourd. "Yd I was cut down in one night." If so, he hm! been cut down with considerable care and minuteness, for I observed that his hair had not escaped tho operation, and there was a peculiar Pentonville penwiper bristle arrangement where his flowing lock* should have been. "' How did it happen ? It come about thi^ May. I wa> dodging outside Chadder's Coilee-house one morning, when a gentleman looks at me and says, 'My man, can you drive ?' " " ' Depends whethor it's a nail or a 'orse,' I say-. * You'll do,' larfed tho gentleman, ' it's a 'orse and a hadvertising wan. "We shan't quanel about wages, you come along •\\ ith me. 1 " '• In a hevil 'oour"r r " continued the penitent of Pentonville, " I follcred him, and he takes me up a yard and there atop of a wan was a monster twelve foot bottle, with a .sharp cork and a label as long as my leg headed- " The Bottle Himp -Try Korrikuloss, the Hair Renovator— goes to the roots of the hewl.' 1 ' "Am 1 for to drive that?" I asked, pointing to the wan, cos I saw there To) going to be a lark o\ or it. " "That 'a about it,' said my employer : ' jump hup.' " I jumped hup, and when I was mounted along.-ide this disgraceful drunken looking bottle, he brings out a young lad, and blessed if he didn't open a trap-door in the side of the bottle and he says to the young un ' Jump in, Jem.' Yes, and Jem did it too, and then I seed there was artful breathe holes all over the bottle. The gentleman then chucked in about twenty thousand handbills and slams the trapdoor. " He pay«s to me, ' Drive hcasy, and pull up outside the pub. at intervals.' " I &ay o ' Drive heasy I can,' but I says, 'I don't know the pubs, at Hintervals. 1 knew 'em at Hislington.' "He larfed, and he says, ' You'll do, drive on.' Well, sir, we started on that fatal woyage, and arter driving slowly for some time, I pulls up oi'toide a tap. I'd I no sooner done so then I heard a sepulI chooral voice hinside the bottle chaunt just like the 'Amlet senior do in the play — " Listen to the bottle himp, try Korrikuloss, ' And. when you buy it, buy it of the boss.' With that tho himp scatters no hend of 'andbilla, and there was a scrimmage for 'em. " Of cour.=e the landlord of the pub. was a making capital out of the crowd, and he behaved 'and^ome to me and brought out the liquor himself, and I was beginning to like the job. " I dro\e on a bit, and pulled up outside another pub. Same business, same result, we got a rat tling crowd around us. " Well, sir, what with stopping outside pub-, and stopping inside 'em, me and the lump got took very bad towards hevening — quite hovercome, you may say, and I was driving wobbly, and I don't know as I didn't do a doze, a\ lien all of a sudden I heard a couple of dreadful shrieks as woke me hup a bit. I'd a been and knocked down a hold gentleman, and that blessed himp had a rolled hout through the bottle and there he was a laying on the pavement, blinking and winking at me like a howl in the sunshine. "I hadn't no trouble with the bottle arter that little misfortune, for the perlice took charge of it, and I don't mind telling you they took charge of me too. I was conducted in triumph to Scotland Yard, and I passed the hevening in a cell and the himp was locked hup in the next one, and 1 could hear his sepulkooral woice in his dreams shouting — ' Ltetcn to tho bottle himp, try Korrikuloss, And hen you buy it, buy it oil' tho boss. I The next morning I was took up and introduced to a gentleman in Bow-street, who j made hissclf worry disagreeable and beha\ed shameful. He said I was a disgrace to humanity, and, dash me ! if the lump | didn't tound on me and hup and told the gentleman as I was a cruel master and always drunk and driving over people. J "Instead of driving the wan home, I'm j ble>sed if I wasn't driven 'om in a wan, and lodged in 'Olloway for fourteen days." " I don't mind telling you, sir," said my ! snivelly narrator, " but I never passed such I a fortnight in my life, it cured me of drink. I never tasted a drop of anythink — not until I come houfc again," he added ; "but of course it blasted my prospects. If I try to get a job 'taint no recommendation for to say as your last place was 'Olloway. If something don't turn hup soon I shall hemigratc. What do you think, sir ?" he asked, appealing to me. " Well, I think the country would be hemigrateful to you if you did." "That's my opinion," he said; and I left the victim of the Bottle Himp to ponder over these words. — " Moonshine."