WHEN YOU’VE GOT THE HUMP

Evening Star, Issue 19019, 14 August 1925, Page 12

WHEN YOU’VE GOT THE HUMP

WAHTED-A TOHIC There is a nameless little germ that gives poor human beings a peculiar disease called “tho hump.” Tho symptoms are a crabby and flabby feeling all over. One cannot understand it. The night’s sleep has been calm and peaceful, apart from tho prolonged howling of a couple of cats and the dustbin lid clattering round the garden. The morning sun streams through tho window, but everything scorns to mock and jeer. Even'the sun smiles contemptuously. Those amazing birds that for ever flutter round tho wash basin (some have little trees and flowers instead of birds) without finding a perch look as though they, too, had spent a restless night. And that romantic picture on the bedroom wall—‘ Honeymooning in a Birmingham Suburb shows up as the hypocrite it really is (writes Edward Dunnill, in the Liverpool ‘ Weekly Post ’). Everything is so disappointing when one gets “ tho hump.” Tho shaving stick is too short to hold and tho beard long enough for the lawn mower, while the razor has become quite timid; and that’s only a start. Optimism makes a hit of a fight and whispers that a good breakfast will work wonders. A false hope! “The humj) ” receives the valuable aid of indigestion, and yet there arc some people who wonder why men lose tho habit of kissing their wives when they go to work. Then out it # goes with the hapless mortal, out into tho unfriendly world to wring the shekels from hard-hearted Hannahs and brass-faced blighters who enslave us. On one’s shoulders perches the miserable burden “tho hump,” and indigestion lays its heavy head on tho bosom. Every face, above a collar looks sad. Not a picturesque'sodness—an underdone Yorkshire pudding sort of'Sadness. Every glance in our direction seems to hold scorn and pity, and we feel as small and insignificant as a snail on a .seven-course menu sheet. Depressing questions flood the mind. “What’s the good of working and slaving for money? Where are tlio pleasures of the table? .Why go to bod,

, when one has to get up again?” And j finally the staggering blow ; “ What’s j tho. good of living?” When you got to j this stage tho phantom demon’ disease i lias got you down—absolutely down 1 and out. I What can you do? If you slip in and i see the friendly- chemist he only puts I you through a hre of questions. “ W he’s jit for? Is it- a physical or nerve tonic ■ you. want? Whore is it?” Ami when you tell him it is all over ho thinks ! that yon are making a joke. “Can | you sleep well?” " Eainy,” yon ro- > piy. cautiously. “Eat well?” “'Poo | well,” with a feeble grin. “Not much I wrong with yon, my lad,” he says. | You can’t go on and tel" him about, the birds on the wash basin, the false picture on the bedroom wall, ami tho shortness of the .shaving stick. So you walk out with the big, grinning hump still weighing on your .shoulders. If the boss would only send this telegram on Monday morning we might i drive it way: “ Don’t come this week; S will forward wages on Friday,”