“T’OTHER LODGER!”
I went in search of lodgings about the village. In the end I came across an old lady, and, after I had had a consultation with her on the above-mentioned subject, she said she could take me in as a lodger if I cared to sleep with another lodger she had—a young butcher: if I was in by eleven o’clock, she assured me, I should be all right. I accepted her offer. Sometime before eleven o’clock, the “other lodger” came home. He was not by any means what Keighley teetotallers would term a “temperate, upright, law-abiding citizen,” for he was as drunk as a pig. When he heard that I was to be his bed-fellow, oh! there was a “shine,” and no mistake. He vehemently declared that he’d never “lig” with me; and, under the circumstances, I sustained his objection, and we parted. Tired and weary as I was I felt that I could well spare all I possessed if only I could get the use of a bed:—
Oh! bed, on thee I first began
To be that curious creature—man,
To travel thro’ this life’s short span,
By fate’s decree,
Till ah fulfill great Nature’s plan,
An’ cease ta be.
When worn wi’ labour, or wi’ pain,
Hah of’en ah am glad an’ fain
To seek thi downy rest again.
Yet heaves mi’ breast
For wretches in the pelting rain
’At hev no rest.