Original Penny Readings: A Series of Short Sketches

by George Manville Fenn

Now that’s the lot, don’t you see, sir, and if you wouldn’t mind putting the box on this chair by the bedside, and shoving the table up close, I’ll put ’em all back careful myself, for lying sick here one don’t get much amusement. Ain’t got even Toby here, which being a dawg warn’t much company, yet he was some, though his name warn’t Toby but Spice. Nice dawg he was, though any training warn’t no good; he was a free child o’ natur, and when his time came for the play he would bite the wrong noses and at the wrong times. The wust of it was too, that he would bolt, I don’t mean swaller, but go a-running off arter other dawgs, and getting his frill torn as bad as his ears, and I never did see a raggeder pair o’ ears than he had nowheres—torn amost to ribbons they was. We lost him at last, though I never knowed how, but a ’spicion crossed my mind one day when Bill my pardner was eating a small German, and it was close by the factory as we missed him; and though Bill said I was a duffer and spoilt his dinner, I allus stuck to it, and allus will, as there was the smell of Spice in that ere sassage.

There you are, yer see sir, all packed clost and neat, and as I said afore I wouldn’t take two pounds for ’em, bad as I am inside and out. Trade’s bad, profession’s bad, and I’m bad; but bless yer heart we shall have a revival yet, and when the drum comes back, and I get wind enough again to do the business, we shall go ahead like all that.

There if I ain’t boxed all the figgers up, and left the coffin out. Good job my old woman ain’t here, or she’d say it was a sign or something o’ that sort, and try to make one uncomfortable; but there you are, you see, sir, all snug now, and it does seem rather a low spiriting thing to have in a house, sir, and putting aside Punch and Judy stuff, the smaller they are the less you like it.

Going, sir? well, you’ll come again, I hope, and if I do get better, why, I’ll go through the lot in front of your house, if you let me have your card.

Beg pardon, sir, thought you were going; not as I wants you to, for company’s werry pleasant when you’re stretched on your back and can’t help yourself. Since I’ve been a-lying here I’ve been reckoning things up, and I’ve come to the conclusion as the world’s got too full. People lives too fast, and do what you will, puff and blow and race after ’em, ten to one you gets beat. Everything wants to be noo and superior, says the people, and nothing old goes down. Look at them happy times, when one could take the missus in the barrer with a sackful o’ cokynuts and pincushions, and them apples and lemons as the more you opened the more come out; then there’d be the sticks, and a tin kettle, and just a few odds and ends, and all drawn by the donkey; when off we’d go down to some country fair or the races; dig the holes or have bags of earth, stick up the things—cokynuts or cushions; the wife sees to the fire and kittle, and you shouts out—leastways, I don’t mean you, I mean me, you know—shouts out, “Three throws a penny,” when the chuckle-headed bumpkins would go on throwing away like winkin’ till they knocked something down, and then go off all on the smile to think how clever they’d been. But now they must have their Aunt Sallys and stuff, and country fairs has all gone to the bow-wows.

If I gets better I’m a-goin’ to turn Punch from a mellowdramy into a opera—make ’em sing everything, you know. I’d have tried it on afore only my mate gets so orrid short-winded with the pipes, and often when you’re a-expectin’ the high notes of a toone he drops it off altogether, and fills in with larrups of the drum, and that wouldn’t do you know in the sollum parts.

Them music-halls has done us as much harm as any-think, and pretty places they is; why if it warn’t for the pretty toons as they fits on the songs, nobody wouldn’t stop to hear the rubbidge as is let off. Punch is stoopid sometimes, we know, but then look at the moral. And there ain’t no moral at all in music-hall songs.

Sometimes I think as I shall have to knock off the national drammy in consequence of want of funds, for you know times may turn so hard that I shall have to sell all off, and the drum mayn’t come back, though I was thinking one time of me and pardner taking a hinstrument each and practisin’ up some good dooets—me taking the drum and him the pipes, allus allowing, of course, as the drum do come back. But then you see as his short-windedness would be agen us, and it wouldn’t do to be allus drowning the high parts with so much leathering.

Heigho, sir. It makes me sigh to lie here so long waiting to get well, till in the dusky evening time, when the gas lamps are shining up and the stars are peeping down, one gets thinking that it’s time to think of that little thing as I left out of the box; and then lying all alone one seems to have all the long years fall away from one, and get back into the old, old times, and often I have been fishing, and wandering, and bird’s-nesting again all over and over as it used to be. I see it all so plainly, and then get calling up all the old mates I had, and reckoning ’em up, and one’s out in Indy, and another was killed in the Crimee, and another’s in Australy for poaching, and among the whole lot I only knows one now, and that’s me—what there is left. I don’t talk like this before the old woman, but I think so much of our old churchyard, and the green graves, and yew trees; and somehow as I remember the old sunny corners and green spots, I fancy as I should like to go to sleep there far away from these courts and alleys. It seems like dying here, and being hurried away afterwards, with every one glad to get rid of you; but down in the old quiet parts it seems to me like watching the sun go down behind the hill, when the still, quiet evening comes on so soft and pleasant, and then you grow tired and worn-out and lie down to rest, taking a long, long sleep under the bright green turf.

But there, I ain’t in the country, I’m here in the thick of London, where I came up to seek my fortun, and never looked in the right place. We poor folks are like the children playing at “Hot boiled beans and werry good butter,” and though while you’re hunting for what’s hid, you may get werry near sometimes, getting warmer and hotter till you’re burning, yet somehow it isn’t often that one finds. Some does, but there’s werry few of ’em, and in the great scramble when one gets hold of anything it’s a chansh if it ain’t snatched out of your hand.