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newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-

purchase tout-in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless

parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from

the community, and, what should justify him according to

our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering.

I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets

him in a different class from other people, or gives most

modern men the right to despise him.

   Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised? -

for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the

simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In

practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless,

productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it

shall be profitable. In all the modern talk about energy,

efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning

is there except "Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of

it"? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this

test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one

could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would

become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar,

looked at realistically, is simply a business man, getting

his living, like other business men, in the way that comes

to hand. He has not, more than most modern people, sold

his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing

a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.

                     XXXII

I WANT to put in some notes, as short as possible, on

London slang and swearing. These (omitting the ones

that everyone knows) are some of the cant words now

used in London:

   A gagger-beggar or street performer of any kind. A

moocher-one who begs outright, without pretence of

doing a trade. A nobbler-one who collects pennies for a

beggar. A chanter-a street singer. A clodhopper -a street

dancer. A mugfaker-a street photographer. A glimmer-

one who watches vacant motor-cars. A gee (or jee-it is

pronounced jee)-the accomplice of a cheapjack, who

stimulates trade by pretending to buy

something. A split-a detective. A flattie-a policeman. A

dideki-a gypsy. A toby-a tramp.

   A drop-money given to a beggar. Funkumlavender or

other perfume sold in envelopes. A boozer -a public-

house. A slang-a hawker's licence. A kip -a place to

sleep in, or a night's lodging. SmokeLondon. A judy-a

woman. The spike-the casual ward. The lump-the casual

ward. A tosheroon-a half-crown. A denner-a shilling. A

hog-a shilling. A sprowsie-a sixpence. Clods-coppers. A

drum-a billy can. Shackles-soup. A chat-a louse. Hard-

up-tobacco made from cigarette ends. A stick or cane -a

burglar's jemmy. A peter-a safe. A bly-a burglar's oxy-

acetylene blow-lamp

   To bawl-to suck or swallow. To knock off-to steal. To

skipper-to sleep in the open.

   About half of these words are in the larger diction-

aries. It is interesting to guess at the derivation of some

of them, though one or two-for instance, "funkum" and

"tosheroon"-are beyond guessing. "Deaner" presumably

comes from "denier." "Glimmer" (with the verb "to

glim") may have something to do with the old word

"glim," meaning a light, or another old word "glim,"

meaning a glimpse; but it is an instance of the formation

of new words, for in its present sense it can hardly be

older than motor-cars. "Gee" is a curious word;

conceivably it has arisen out of "gee," meaning horse, in

the sense of stalking horse. The derivation of "screever"

is mysterious. It must come ultimately from scribo, but

there has been no similar word in English for the past

hundred and fifty years; nor can it have come directly

from the French, for pavement artists are unknown in

France. "Judy" and "bawl" are East End words, not

found west of Tower Bridge. "Smoke" is a word used

only by tramps. "Kip" is Danish. Till quite recently

the word "doss" was used in this sense, but it is now

quite obsolete.

   London slang and dialect seem to change very

rapidly. The old London accent described by Dickens

and Surtees, with v for w and w for v and so forth, has

now vanished utterly. The Cockney accent as we know

it seems to have come up in the 'forties (it is first men-

tioned in an American book, Herman Melville's

White

Jacket

), and Cockney is already changing; there are few

people now who say "fice" for "face," "nawce" for

"nice" and so forth as consistently as they did twenty

years ago. The slang changes together with the accent.

Twenty-five or thirty years ago, for instance, the

"rhyming slang" was all the rage in London. In the

"rhyming slang" everything was named by something

rhyming with it-a "hit or miss" for a kiss, "plates of

meat" for feet, etc. It was so common that it was even

reproduced in novels; now it is almost extinct.' Perhaps

all the words I have mentioned above will have van-

ished in another twenty years.

   The swear words also change-or, at any rate, they are

subject to fashions. For example, twenty years ago the

London working classes habitually used the word

"bloody." Now they have abandoned it utterly, though

novelists still represent them as using it. No born

Londoner (it is different with people of Scotch or Irish

origin) now says "bloody," unless he is a man of some

education. The word has, in fact, moved up in the social

scale and ceased to be a swear word for the purposes of

the working classes. The current London adjective, now

tacked on to every noun, is ---------

     . No

doubt in time---, like "bloody," will find its way into

1 It survives in certain abbreviations, such as "use your

twopenny" or "use your head." "Twopenny" is arrived at like

this: head-loaf of bread-twopenny loaf-twopenny.

the drawing-room and be replaced by some other word.

   The whole business of swearing, especially English

swearing, is mysterious. Of its very nature swearing is