Bricks and mortar and whitewash
will not change the nature of human vermin; phrases about beauty and
duty and loveliness will not affect the maker of slums, any more than
perfumes or pretty colours would affect the rats that squirm under the
foundations of the city. Does the sentimentalist imagine that the
brick-and-mortar structures about which he wails were always centres
of festering ugliness? If he has that fancy, let him take a glance at
some of the quaint old houses of Southwark. They were clean and
beautiful in their day, but the healthy human plant can no longer
flourish in them, and the weed creeps in, the crawling parasite
befouls their walls, and the structures which were lovely when
Chaucer's pilgrims started from the "Tabard" are abominable now. If
English folk of gentle and cleanly breeding had lived on in those
ancient places, they would have been wholesome and sound like many
another house erected in days gone by; but the weed gradually took
root, and now the ugliest dens in London are found in the places where
knights and trim clerks and gracious dames once lived. In the face of
all these things, how strangely unwise it is to fancy that ever the
Forlorn Army can be saved by bricks and mortar!
Education? Ah, there comes a pinch--and a very severe pinch it is!
About five or six years since some of the most important thoroughfares
in London, Liverpool, and many great towns have been rendered totally
impassable by the savage proceedings of gangs of young roughs.
Pages:
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171