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JIM’S JOTTINGS.

    ["Do the poor make the slums, or the slums make the
    poor?”—­Henry Lazarus, in “Landlordism."]

[Illustration]

  Is it the poor wot makes the Slums, or the Slums wot makes the poor? 
  Well, that’s the question, Guv’nor, and I’ve ’eared it arsked afore,
  And the arnser ain’t so easy, if you wants to be O.K. 
  Don’t suppose as I can settle it, but I’ll have my little say.

  My old friend Mister LAZARUS, now, he ups and sez, sez he,
  The great Ground Landlord is the great prime cause.  “Yah!
          fiddlededee!”
  Cries the House-Farmer; “Slums is Slums, acos the Poor is Pigs!”
  “You try ’em, friend philanthropist!  They’ll play you proper rigs.”

  Yus, there’s two sides to heverythink, wus luck!  That’s where
          we’re fogged. 
  Passiges like foul pigstyes, gents, and backyards like black bogs,
  Banisters broke for firewood, and smashed winders stuffed with rags,
  These make the sniffers slate the poor, Perticular if they’re wags.

  Well, gents, you know, it’s this way.  Just you fancy yerselves
          born
  In a back-slum like Ragman’s Rents.  ’Old ’ard, don’t larf with
          scorn! 
  Some on us is born there, yer know; it might ha’ bin your luck,
  If yer mother’d bin a boozer, and yer father’d got the chuck.

  Of course yourn was respectable; mine wosn’t; there’s the diff.! 
  Ah! things like this ain’t settled by a snort or by a sniff. 
  Jest fancy hopening yer eyes fust time in a dark dive,
  Or a sky-parlour where a plarnt o’ musk won’t keep alive.

  Emagine, if yer washups can, some ten foot square o’ room,
  With a stror-heap in one corner, and a “dip” to light the gloom;
  With the walls dirt-streaked with damp-lines, outside, a drunken
          din,
  And hinside, a whiff of sewer-gas in a hatmosphere of gin.

  Some on you carn’t emagine there’s sech ’orrors on the earth;
  But there are, you bet your buttons.  Who’d select ’em for their
          birth? 
  Not you, not me, not no one, if you asked ’em, I expect;
  But yer place o’ birth yer see, gents’ jest the thing yer carn’t
          select.

  If you’re born where streets is narrer, and where rooms is werry
          small,
  Where you’ve damp sludge for a ceiling, rotting plarster for a wall;
  Where yer carn’t eat, sleep, wash yerselves, or lay up when you’re
          sick,
  Without tumbling one o’er tother, wy, yer sinks, gents, pooty
          quick.

  Sinks! Yes, when wot yer lives in is a sink, or somethink wus;
  With a drunkard for a mother, and some neighbour for a nuss;
  With the gutter for yer playground, and a ’ome from which yer
          shrink,
  Can you wonder that poor Slum-birds is give o’er to Dirt and Drink.