THE VAGROM MAN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 15, 19 January 1910, Page 11

THE VAGROM MAN.

A TENNYSONIAN "BOTTLE-OH." AND OTHER TYPES. "Well," murmured one, "Let whoso make or buy. My clay with long Oblivion is gone dry : Bub fill me v ith the old familiar Juice, MethinKs I might recover by and hy." —Khayyam. He was resting half-asleep beside his handcart, which was backed into a rocky recess of Oriental Bay. - The man, with connoisseur's cunning, had picked a corner with choice of sun or shade, and he was languidly puffing pungent smoke towards the blue dome from an unlovely pipe, which was in the seventh degree of mellowness, of course. The "bottle-oh's" pipe is always in higher condition than himself. The bottles, gathered painfully up and down hill, were leaning all awry, like their owner, who gazed peacefully at the bright world through half-closed eyes. When he heard a step he lifted one eyelid a little, and when the walker halted near him and looked upon him, the "bottle-oh" fidgeted uneasily, and shuffled to his feet. On principle, he suspected strangers who thus mysteriously approached him 1 . He eyed the intruder with apparent indifference but shrewdly, and nonchalantly hummed' an air of "Miss Hook of Holland" — "Bottles, bottles, Dottlers, bottles, bottles, all day long." " "All day long?" the stranger asked in an even voice. The "bottle-oh" shot a keen glance from the corner of one eye, and then he laughed. "Sherlock Holmes?" He grinned. "What are you driving at? We are not all 'crook.' Some of us are noble 'bottle-oh's.' We have known better days, sir — Purple and fine linen, and oft the fatted calf," he said with a roguish smile, "and now fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen from our high estate." He waved a hand over his medley of bottles, and cited Tennyson. So hold I commerce with the dead; Or so methinkß the dead would say; Or so shall grief with symbols play, And pining life be fancy-fed. "Symbols. . . fancy-fed," he murmured, and his eyes had a dreamy look as if he yearned for all that had fled from the vacant bottles. He picked up one, and looked upon it reverentially, and again levied upon Tennyson — If jou be what I think you, some sweet dream, I would but ask you to fulfil yourself. "That is the worst of the bottle busi- 1 ness to an imaginative man," he resumed. "It is so suggestive, especially in these dog days. Too much green, too little brown. But the bottles are calling. There is much white road to cover." He moved the cart, and the bottles softly chinked. The vagrom man, looking back over a tattered shoulder, while the bottles nudged one another melodiously, quoted : — There is s>»eet music here that softer falls Than petals froii blown roses on the grass. So vanishes an imaginary "bottle-oh" who may, however, have a living duplicate in the varied tribe that tramp the hills. There are others who have a much more solid existence than in the mind's eye. THE HEY-DAY OF BOTTLES. The -incorrigible "punier" -bases - his chronology on Cups (the year Grand Rapids won the Cup, and so on). It is thought that the "Bottle-oh" may mark time nowadays from the great "Year of Bottles, 1907, when an attempt was made to corner the supply. Large brewing firms were competing so vigorously for bottles that the happy gatherer was clearing two, three, or four shillings a dozen. That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Bottles are down, so down that it is alleged iome of the peripatetic collectors are indifferent whether they harvest any or not. These be the ones that the housewives may fear. THEY HUNT IN COUPLES. Two or three weeks ago a couple of forlorn "bottle-ohs" appeared before Dr. M 'Arthur, S.M., and were convicted of petty theft. The magistrate declined to believe that two men could Kve honestly on one little cart, which is the chief feature of the gatherer's plant; the other is a capfceious sack. The magistrate remarked that he doubted whether two men, in these times, could earn enough by a "bottle-oh" partnership to buy much beer. This conclusion was sweeping, and not fair to all members of the craft, but the censor probably had in mind two or three other convictions recorded against individuals who have used their sacks for other goods than bottles when they have satisfied themselves that nobody was in the houses at the time of their call. • The genuine "bottle-oh's" profits depend, of course, on his own powers of driving a bargain and the housewives' ability in dealing. Some "bottle-ohs" can almost convince some householders that if anybody is to receive payment it is the man who takes away the encumbrance — the bottles — and these callers often secure the vessels for nothing. CHANGE OF OCCUPATION. Some "botUe-ohs" like a change occasionally. They will go to Oriental Bay, and load up with cockles for a tour through the suburbs, and these ventures sometimes pay well. They may drop into fruit-costering for a week or two, or may try their luck with vending vegetables or fish — but the fish business does not attract them so much in Wellington as in other places. Here, too, one may often see a spectacle which is not uncommon in Christchurch — the "bottle-oh" who combines a cash and barter business. He will giv,e money or fruit or fish for bottles or ancient zinc. After he has been at work for an hour or two his handcart, with its medley of scrap, dingy glassware, oranges and barracouta, with possibly a few pounds of bones or other litter in ail odd corner, compels more than a fleeting glance from the passer-by. Time was, too, when the "bottle-oh" could employ some hours profitably on race-courses and other sports grounds, by various games of chance. The handcart and the sack, when races were "off," provided the "lawful, visible means of support," but with him the side-line of the race-course was the main line. The law has fenceu out this species of shabby practitioner from the turf; the public Joses its money to better-dressed operators. SHADOWED. The honest "bottle-oh" has to suffer for the sins of his roguish brethren, whose bottle-collecting is more or less a cover for oLher designs. They are all closely scanned by the police, Their comings and theu 1 going are watched by the detectives. They are never much out of range of the law's eye. A notebook ib ever handy to jot down an inventory of the company that a "bottleoh" may be keeping in his leisure hours. The shady ones' haunts are known, and a long arm is ever ready to lift them into court if sufficient evidence, of the "consorting" or other order, accumulates against them.