Boys -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Slums -- Fiction
Father Sturt's efforts to stimulate a search for new lodgings met with
small success at first. It was felt that, no doubt, there were lodgings
to be had, but they would be open to the fatal objection of costing
something; and the Jago temperament could neither endure nor understand
payment for what had once been given for nothing. Father Sturt, the
Jagos argued, had given them free quarters for so long. Then why should
he stop now? If they cleared out in order to make room for his new
church, in common fairness he should find them similar lodging on the
same terms. So they sat and waited for him to do it.
At length the vicar set to work with them in good earnest, carried away
with him a family or two at a time, and inducted them to rooms of his
own finding. And hereat others, learning that in these cases rent in
advance was exacted, bestirred themselves: reflecting that if rent must
be paid they might as well choose their own rooms as take those that
Father Sturt might find. Of course the thing was not done without
payments from the vicar's pocket. Some were wholly destitute; others
could not muster enough to pay that advance of rent which alone could
open a Jago tenancy. Distinguishing the genuine impecuniosity from the
merely professed, with the insight that was now a sixth sense with him,
Father Sturt helped sparingly and in secret; for a precedent of
almsgiving was an evil thing in the Jago, confirming the shiftlessness
which was already a piece of Jago nature, and setting up long affliction
for the almsgiver. Enough of such precedents existed; and the inevitable
additions thereto were a work of anxious responsibility and jealous
care.
So the bivouac in Old Jago Street melted away. For one thing, there were
those among the dispossessed who would not waste time in unproductive
inactivity just then; for war had arisen with Dove Lane, and spoils were
going. Dove Lane was no very reputable place, but it was not like the
Jago. In the phrase of the district, the Dove Laners were pretty thick,
but the Jagos were thick as glue. There were many market-porters among
the Dove Laners, and at this, their prosperous season, they and their
friends resorted to a shop in Meakin Street, kept by an 'ikey' tailor,
there to buy the original out-and-out downy benjamins, or the celebrated
bang-up kicksies, cut saucy, with artful buttons and a double fakement
down the sides. And hereabout they were apt to be set upon by Jagos;
overthrown by superior numbers; bashed; and cleaned out. Or, if the
purchases had been made, they were flimped of their kicksies, benjies or
daisies, as the case might be. So that a fight with Dove Lane might be
an affair of some occasional profit; and it became no loyal Jago to idle
in the stronghold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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