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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Constable M‘Carty’s Investigations</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Most unpleasantly adjacent to the haunts of lower orders<br>Stood a ‘terrace’ in the city when the current year began,<br>And a notice indicated there were vacancies for boarders<br>In the middle house, and lodgings for a single gentleman.<br>Now, a singular observer could have seen but few attractions<br>Whether in the house, or ‘missus’, or the notice, or the street,<br>But at last there came a lodger whose appearances and actions<br>Puzzled Constable M‘Carty, the policeman on the beat. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He (the single gent) was wasted almost to emaciation,<br>And his features were the palest that M‘Carty ever saw,<br>And these indications, pointing to a past of dissipation,<br>Greatly strengthened the suspicions of the agent of the law.<br>He (the lodger—hang the pronoun!) seemed to like the stormy weather,<br>When the elements in battle kept it up a little late;<br>Yet he’d wander in the moonlight when the stars were close together,<br>Taking ghostly consolation in a visionary state. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He would walk the streets at midnight, when the storm-king raised his banner,<br>Walk without his old umbrella,—wave his arms above his head:<br>Or he’d fold them tight, and mutter, in a wild, disjointed manner,<br>While the town was wrapped in slumber and he should have been in bed.<br>Said the constable-on-duty: ‘Shure, Oi wonther phwat his trade is?’<br>And the constable would watch him from the shadow of a wall,<br>But he never picked a pocket, and he ne’er accosted ladies,<br>And the constable was puzzled what to make of him at all. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now, M‘Carty had arrested more than one notorious dodger,<br>He had heard of men afflicted with the strangest kind of fads,<br>But he couldn’t fix the station or the business of the lodger,<br>Who at times would chum with cadgers, and at other times with cads.<br>And the constable would often stand and wonder how the gory<br>Sheol the stranger got his living, for he loafed the time away<br>And he often sought a hillock when the sun went down in glory,<br>Just as if he was a mourner at the burial of the day. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Mac. had noticed that the lodger did a mighty lot of smoking,<br>And could ‘stow away a long ’un,’ never winking, so he could ;<br>And M‘Carty once, at midnight, came upon the lodger poking<br>Round about suspicious alleys where the common houses stood.<br>Yet the constable had seen him in a class above suspicion—<br>Seen him welcomed with effusion by a dozen ‘toney gents’—<br>Seen him driving in the buggy of a rising politician<br>Thro’ the gateway of the member’s toney private residence. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And the constable, off duty, had observed the lodger slipping<br>Down a lane to where the river opened on the ocean wide,<br>Where he’d stand for hours gazing at the distant anchor’d shipping,<br>But he never took his coat off, so it wasn’t suicide.<br>For the constable had noticed that a man who’s filled with loathing<br>For his selfish fellow-creatures and the evil things that be,<br>Will, for some mysterious reason, shed a portion of his clothing,<br>Ere he takes his first and final plunge into eternity. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And M‘Carty, once at midnight—be it said to his abasement—<br>Left his beat and climbed a railing of considerable height,<br>Just to watch the lodger’s shadow on the curtain of his casement<br>While the little room was lighted in the listening hours of night.<br>Now, at first the shadow hinted that the substance sat inditing;<br>Now it indicated toothache, or the headache; and again,<br>’Twould exaggerate the gestures of a dipsomaniac fighting<br>Those original conceptions of a whisky-sodden brain. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then the constable, retreating, scratched his head and muttered ‘Sorra<br>‘Wan of me can undershtand it. But Oi’ll keep me oi on him,<br>‘Divil take him and his tantrums; he’s a lunatic, begorra!<br>‘Or, if he was up to mischief, he’d be sure to douse the glim.’<br>But M‘Carty wasn’t easy, for he had a vague suspicion<br>That a ‘skame’ was being plotted; and he thought the matter down<br>Till his mind was pretty certain that the business was sedition,<br>And the man, in league with others, sought to overthrow the Crown. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But, in spite of observation, Mac received no information<br>And was forced to stay inactive, being puzzled for a charge.<br>That the lodger was a madman seemed the only explanation,<br>Tho’ the house would scarcely harbour such a lunatic at large.<br>His appearance failed to warrant apprehension as a vagrant,<br>Tho’ ’twas getting very shabby, as the constable could see;<br>But M‘Carty in the meantime hoped to catch him in a flagrant<br>Breach of peace, or the intention to commit a felony. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(For digression there is leisure, and it is the writer’s pleasure<br>Just to pause a while and ponder on a painful legal fact,<br>Being forced to say in sorrow, and a line of doubtful measure,<br>That there’s nothing so elastic as the cruel Vagrant Act)<br>Now, M‘Carty knew his duty, and was brave as any lion,<br>But he dreaded being ‘landed’ in an influential bog—<br>As the chances were he would be if the man he had his eye on<br>Was a person of importance who was travelling incog. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Want of sleep and over-worry seemed to tell upon M‘Carty:<br>He was thirsty more than ever, but his appetite resigned;<br>He was previously reckoned as a jolly chap and hearty,<br>But the mystery was lying like a mountain on his mind.<br>Tho’ he tried his best, he couldn’t get a hold upon the lodger,<br>For the latter’s antecedents weren’t known to the police—<br>They considered that the ‘devil’ was a dark and artful dodger<br>Who was scheming under cover for the downfall of the peace. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">’Twas a simple explanation, though M‘Carty didn’t know it,<br>Which with half his penetration he might easily have seen,<br>For the object of his dangerous suspicions was a poet,<br>Who was not so widely famous as he thought he should have been.<br>And the constable grew thinner, till one morning, ‘little dhramin’<br>‘Av the sword of revelation that was leapin’ from its sheath,’<br>He alighted on some verses in the columns of the Frayman,<br>‘Wid the christian name an’ surname av the lodger onderneath!’ </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408596" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now, M‘Carty and the poet are as brother is to brother,<br>Or, at least, as brothers should be; and they very often meet<br>On the lonely block at midnight, and they wink at one another—<br>Disappearing down the by-way of a shanty in the street.<br>And the poet’s name you’re asking!—well, the ground is very tender,<br>You must wait until the public put the gilt upon the name,<br>Till a glorious, sorrow-drowning, and, perhaps, a final ‘bender,’<br>Heralds his triumphant entrance to the thunder-halls of Fame.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Henry+Lawson">Henry Lawson</a></strong></div>