Pick My Words, Wisely

On the trivial matter of Pinching & Punching.

“If it breathes of gin,
keep it in;

if it reeks of turd,
chuck it to the kerb.”

These marvelous words, freely given, orally, while sitting with three companions of a sort, including a drunk as Punch pub scavenger from Wortley, Leeds.

They were spoken on Penny Pint Nite at The King and Keys —
by me, surely — but written down by another, who accidentally overheard them while sitting casually at the next table, journal open, pen wet with Stephens’ Blue-Black from a little five-inch cork-stoppered stoneware bottle —
'twas one of Harmsworth’s half-witted bohemian halfpenny men, I was certain.

No, this was not one of the usual cheap-pint thefts I was accustomed to across the street.

Those lower-market comic-paper fellows were my friends, and stole my work honourably, using it tastefully — more tastefully, I should add, than the liquor with which they plied me to reveal those stories in the first place.