"WEARY WILLIE."

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 108, 8 May 1909, Page 14

"WEARY WILLIE."

WORK? NO, THANK YOU! "Get out, into the highways and byways," quoted tlje chief scribe who wrote in the book of fate. It was a ■'delicate mission, for the quarry was I known to be hard to approach. The .jcun was hardly three hours old, and it was more than probable, too, that the game had not yet left his covert, having, perhaps, been out late foraging the night before. His lair was somewhere in the pine reserve on the Mount Victoria lower slopes, and it was generally thought that, having drunk deeply the bouquet of the pines, he came down, working his way towards the common meeting ground on the corner of Bal-lances-street and Lanibton-qnay, to lounge awhile amid the dew on the grassy lawns of Oriental Bay. There, in his native element, unsuspecting, glorying in a luxurious dolce far niente, I found him. Stealthily stalking him — • popular belief credited him with all sorts of savageness — the hunter crept towards him, trained an unerring bead on him. The gun was loaded with silver, aud down he came without a struggle. "A JUG OF WINE AND THOU . . ." No ; it was not too early for him, and it freshened him up. Oh — beer, and as long a one as you can get for sixpence. What a fine specimen he looked as we strolled towards the rustic seat. There in the fragrant day, with the savour of the clean, cool sea to hedge about my nasal apprehensions. ". . . . A jug of wine and thou sitting beside me in the wilderness. . . . were Paradise enow" : So we foregathered in great confidence in sight of the green waters with the wine safely stowed away. He fitted his bacK into the corner of the. seat — a protesting seat it was, in sooth — and graciously consented to be interviewed. Under the sanctuary of a comparative respectability, he feared no dogs that mighe be on his track. The morning "comfort" had melted the'barriers of his nature, and, unafraid and almost proudly, he laid bare his soul. It was rather on the small side, with wizened features and furtive eyes that indicated astigmatism. For a shilling the cavalier of misfortune would sell a page of his tattered book of life, without bothering with a receipt. A PICTURESQUE RAGAMUFFIN. His general ensemble was picturesque ill its unhallowed vagabondage. That emblem of respectability, a coat yclept "flogger," was pinned close about a neck which rested under deep suspicion. One shuddered to think that the long garment, dull and dingy, might once have clothed the shoulders of a stockbroker or a shopwalker. The trousers, of passable shape down to the knees, fell away in concertina-like folds to hide the- shame of bare brown ankles and unhappy boots, whose eyelets yearned (as only eyelets can) for better things, and through whose despairing yawns wind, water, and dust of many days had made their way. Re-composing his delicate frame advantageously, . the lodger of the pines told, disjointedly, a story. "IN THE DAYS OF MY YOUTH." He had done no actual work sinee — it was too long ago to recall. He had acquired the habit while very young, and it had grown with him. He thought that the complaint was hereditary, as he remembered his father as a corpulent man, whose life was mainly made up of sudden attacks of a desperate "illness ' which necessitated periodic convalesences till the next attack. For his male parent life was a long series of "attacks" and relapses with domestic civil war to enliven the gloom. As far as his own school-life, he admitted to many infractions. That period of his existence was equally divided between the schoolroom and the milk carts on the foreshore. And the thoughts of the remainder of his ill-spent youth — it may have been the gentle inspiration of the flagon — bi ought a retrospective far-away look in his eyes, and he almost sighed. Pulling himself together jusfc in time, the communicative vagabond, the glamoured dalliance of his unstrenuous youth, and the fierce delights that waited thereupon. Of the loaring nights in the fourpem'iy dives when the up-country piledriver or rouseabout was piling up experiences to startle the camps with, the while he leaned bold brows towards the cool beauty who "did him proud" ; of; packed public gatherings where things more material than unseemly language were thrown; of bottle-fights after hours, of all the happy delirium of unfettered manhood, nigh to bloom : there and more, a startling history, until the present time, and the man he was now. HIS DAILY ROUND. His daily round? With a languid readjustment of his hat, and a blase air, he admits to its monotony. So much of the sun as can be got in the keen spring, autumn, and winter days, and as is consistent with his regular attendance at the Magistrate's Court. He makes a point of seeing that, justice is dispensed without favour on most days, summer and winter. There he meets companions of the noble order, and when the dock is empty for the day, there is the off-chance that someone has at least eightpence. If that be the happy fortune then is a fervent Socialist, and may all the pains of hell attend the "fat" man. On those days when the skies are uncharitable, and the wind and rain make sad music in his mind and his boots, his cardcase tells him that the reading room of tho Public Library is on the list to-day, and there, a free citizen, of a great and glorious Empire, he takes a seat with the best of them, and reads or dozes, or both. No matter the weather, a call must be made round the basement bars of the various hotels and- coffee palaces for the unconsidered trifles that, not infrequently, strew the floor with roses. He may also, on his way home before dark, spy out some new lodging in an unobtrusive corner, if the new policeman is otherwhere. HORRID POLICEMEN— AND A PLAINT. Policemen are his pet aversion, he confides, unconsciously swivelling the middleaged head over one shoulder. Another is the mission worker, who will persist in trying to assist this Romany of the city away from his sloth and his great unwashedness. But the blue-coated gentry are the bases of all his evil dreams. He considers them so cold, unfeeling, brusque, unsympathetic, and not a bit decent. " One has no where to lay one's head," he lamented, apostrophising the Law and its minions. They objected strongly to his fugitive tenancy of old dry buildings, stables, and barns ■without lawful excuse ; to his living the "simple life" of the backwoods among his beloved pines. It is a large grievance of his that he should be punished so heartlessly because, while in an inflammable paper-lined room, he has smoked and not put his matches in the candlestick. His soul cannot understand it all. He has a story for my private ear alone : " One cold night, just after midnight, in a stable in Howe's Lane "—" — and suddenly he breaks off, and his eyes, cast beyond immediate associations, are tocussed on the gable of a red brick building that looms up across Te Aro and Taranaki-street from, the hill. No need to finish the story. One can picture the harried and hara-ssed man, dragged relentlessly from his warm " snuggle " in the stable-loft, through the cold streets, protesting at the large hand on the coat collar, to the uncharitable dock, and the inevitable end. Suddenly the dream fled, and he came back to earth.