The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 6: August 1906Various
History
The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 6: August 1906
Various
Periodicals
Most unexpected, the mystery came out one day at Egham races. The public
was shy of bein' pulled in, and Chops was ringin' his little bell out of
his drawin'-room winder, and was snarlin' to me over his shoulder as he
kneeled down with his legs out at the back door--for he couldn't be shoved
into his house without kneeling down, and the premises wouldn't
accommodate his legs--was snarlin':
"Here's a precious public for you; why the devil don't they tumble up?"
when a man in the crowd holds up a carrier-pigeon and cries out:
"If there's any person here as has got a ticket, the Lottery's just
draw'd, and the number as has come up for the great prize is three, seven,
forty-two! Three, seven, forty-two!"
I was givin' the man to the furies myself, for calling of the public's
attention--for the public will turn away, at any time, to look at anything
in preference to the thing showed 'em; and if you doubt it, get 'em
together for any individual purpose on the face of the earth, and send
only two people in late and see if the whole company ain't far more
interested in taking particular notice of them two than you--I say I
wasn't best pleased with the man for callin' out, wasn't blessin' him in
my own mind, when I see Chops's little bell fly out of the winder at a old
lady, and he gets up and kicks his box over, exposin' the whole secret,
and he catches hold of the calves of my legs and he says to me:
"Carry me into the wan, Toby, and throw a pail of water over me, or I'm a
dead man, for I'm come into my property!"
Twelve thousand odd hundred pounds was Chops's winnins. He had bought a
half-ticket for the twenty-five thousand prize, and it had come up. The
first use he made of his property was to offer to fight the Wild Indian
for five hundred pound a side, him with a poisoned darnin'-needle and the
Indian with a club; but the Indian being in want of backers to that
amount, it went no further.
Arter he had been mad for a week--in a state of mind, in short, in which,
if I had let him sit on the organ for only two minutes, I believe he would
have bust--but we kept the organ from him--Mr. Chops come round and
behaved liberal and beautiful to all.
He then sent for a young man he knowed, as had a wery genteel appearance
and was a Bonnet at a gaming-booth (most respectable brought up, father
havin' been imminent in the livery-stable line, but unfortunate in a
commercial crisis through paintin' a old gray, ginger-bay, and sellin' him
with a pedigree), and Mr. Chops said this to Bonnet, who said his name was
Normandy, which it wasn't:
"Normandy, I'm going into society. Will you go with me?"
Says Normandy: "Do I understand you, Mr. Chops, to hintimate that the 'ole
of the expenses of that move will be borne by yourself?"
"Correct," says Mr. Chops. "And you shall have a princely allowance too."
The Bonnet lifted Mr. Chops upon a chair to shake hands with him, and
replied in poetry, his eyes seemingly full of tears:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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