Punch (95.1888)

138

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [Skptbmbkr 22, 1888.

RINGOAL.

A New and Charming Game. As it is, however, rather apt to Decapitate the Lookers-on, it is well for these

provide themselves with shields, in the shape of sunshades, umbrellas, lawn-tennis bats, &c.

BLIND-MAN'S BUFF.

A strange mad game to play in such a place!
The monster City's maze, whose paths to trace
Might tax another Theseus, the resort
Of worse than Minotaurs, for blindfold sport
Would seem the most unfitting of all scenes •
What is it there such solemn fooling means ?

Means ? Ask purblind Municipal Muddledom
The true significance of the City Slum.
Ask, but expect no answer more exact
Than blundering palterers with truth and fact
Range in their pigeon-holes in order neat,
The awkward questionings of sense to meet,
And, meeting, blandly baffle. Lurking crime
Haunts from of old these dens of darksome
slime.

There, where well-armed Authority fears to
tread,

Murder and outrage rear audacious head,
Unscanned, untracked. As the swift-sliding
snake

Slips to the covert of the swamp's foul brake,
Fearless of following where no foot may find
Firm resting, where the foetid fumes that
blind,

The reeking mists that palsy, guard its lair;
So Crime sneaks to the Slum's seclusion.
There

Revealing light, the foe of all things ill,
With no intrusive ray floods in to fill
Those hideous alleys, and those noisome nooks,
With health and safety. Flush with limpid
brooks

The slime-fouled gutters of the Ghetto, drive
Plinlimmon's _ breeze through Labour's
choking hive,

But let not light into the loathsome den
Where hags called women, ghouls in guise of
men

Live on death-dealing, feed a loathly life,
On the chance profits of the furtive knife.
The robber's mountain haunt, the outlaw's

cave,

Guarded by rocks or sheltered by the wave
From feet intrusive, furnish no such lair
For desperate villany^ or dull despair,
As this obscene Alsatia of the Slums.
Town's carrion-hordes flock hither ; hither
comes

The haggard harpy of the pavement, she
The victim's victim, whose delirious glee
Makes mirth a crackling horror ; hither slink
The waifs of passion and the wrecks of drink.
Multiform wretchedness in rags and grime,
Ilopeless of good and ripe for every crime ;
A seething mass of misery and of vice,
These grim but secret-guarding haunts entice.
Look at those walls ; they reek with dirt and

damp, [tramp
But in their shadows crouched the homeless
May huddle undisturbed the black night

through.

Those narrow winding courts—in thought-
pursue, [wife,
Wo light there breaks upon the bludgeoned
No flash of day arrests the lifted knife,
There shrieks arouse not, nor do groans
affright.

These are but normal noises of the night
In this obscure Gehenna.

Must it be

That the black slum shall furnish sanctuary
To all light-shunning creatures of the slime,
Vermin of vice, carnivora of crime ?

Must it be here that Mammon finds its tilth,
And harvests gold from haunts of festering-
filth ? [stricken dumb,
How long ? The voice of sense seems
What time the sordid Spectre of the Slum,
Ruthless red-handed Murder sways the scene,
Mocking of glance, and merciless of mien.
Mocking ? Ah, yes! At Law the ghoul may
laugh,

The sword is here as harmless as the staff
Of crippled age; its sleuthhounds are at
fault,

Justice appears not only blind but halt.
It seems to play a merely blinkered game,
Blundering about without a settled aim,
Like boys at Blind-Man's Buff. A pretty
sport

For La w's sworn guards in rascaldom's resort!
The bland official formula to-day
Seems borrowed from the tag of Nursery play,
"Turn round three times," upon no settled
plan,

Flounder and fumble, and " catch whom you
can!"

The Danger of Drowsiness.—A Railway
accident is not uncommonly attributable to a
sleeper having given way. Considering the
lengthened hours of exhaustive exertion to
which signalmen and other overworked ser-
vitors attendant on railways are commonly
subject, one wonders that terrible accidents do
not occur even still more frequently than usual
through the somnolence of railway sleepers.

An historic name that may always be in-
troduced " d propos de bottes "—BuNXAN.