The World’s Wit and Humor: An Encyclopedia in 15 Volumes. 1906.
Richard Harris Barham (Thomas Ingoldsby) (17881845)Not a Sou Had He Got
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And he looked confoundedly flurried,
As he bolted away without paying his shot,
And the landlady after him hurried.
When home from the club returning;
We twigged the doctor beneath the light
Of the gas-lamp brilliantly burning.
Reclined in the gutter we found him;
And he looked like a gentleman taking a snooze,
With his Marshall cloak around him.
And we managed a shutter to borrow;
We raised him, and sighed at the thought that his head
Would “consumedly ache” on the morrow.
And we told his wife and his daughter
To give him, next morning, a couple of red
Herrings, with soda-water.
And his lady began to upbraid him;
But little he recked, so they let him snore on
’Neath the counterpane just as we laid him.
When, beneath the window calling,
We heard the rough voice of a son of a gun
Of a watchman “One o’clock” bawling.
From his room in the uppermost story;
A rush light was placed in the cold hearth-stone;
And we left him alone in his glory.