"Find one straight before me?"
Bobby, you're a trump!
Faintness stealing o'er me—
Ha—at last—a pump!
If that little maid 'll
Just make room for one,
I could grab the ladle
After she has done.
The last verse is the culminating point of this moral drama:—The miserable wretch has reached the last stage. He shuts himself up in his cheerless abode, and there, in shameful secrecy, consumes the element for which he is powerless to pay—the inevitable Nemesis following.
Sixth Verse (All lights down in front. Ghastly green light at wings).
Up his sordid stairs in secret to the cistern now he steals,
Where, amidst organic matter, gambol microscopic eels;
Tremblingly he turns the tap on—not a trickle greets the trough!
For the stony-hearted turncock's gone and cut his water off!
Refrain (in which the profligate is supposed to demand an explanation from the turncock, with a terrible dénoûment).
"Rate a quarter owing,
Comp'ny stopped supply."
"Set the stream a-flowing,
Demon—or you die!"
"Mercy!—ah! you've choked me!"
[In hoarse, strangled voice as the turncock.
"Will you turn the plug?" [Savagely as the hero.
"No!" [Faintly, as turncock.
[Business of flinging a corpse on stage, and regarding it terror-stricken. A long pause; then, in a whisper,—
"The fool provoked me!
(With a maniac laugh.) Horror! I'm a Thug!"
[Here the artist will die, mad, in frightful agony, and rise to bow his acknowledgments.