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.