Jacob A. Riis 1849–1914. The Battle with the Slum. 1902.
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| bottom of the stairs, he will be the last to be burned whom a single tile protects from the rain where the tame pigeons lay their eggs.” (Clearly they had no air-shafts in the Roman tenements!) “Codrus had a bed too small for his Procula; six little jugs, the ornament of his sideboard, and a little can, besides, beneath it.… What a height it is from the lofty roofs from which a potsherd tumbles on your brains. How often cracked and chipped earthenware falls from the windows.… Pray and bear about with you the miserable wish that they may be contented with throwing down only what the broad basins have held.… If you can tear yourself away from the games in the circus, you can buy a capital house at Sora, or Fabrateria, or Frasino, for the price at which you are now hiring your dark-hole for one year. There you will have your little garden… live there enamoured of the pitchfork.… It is something to be able in any spot to have made oneself proprietor even of a single lizard… None but the wealthy can sleep in Rome.” 1 |
| One reads with a grim smile of the hold-ups of old: “‘Where do you come from?’ he (policeman?) thunders out. ‘You don’t answer? Speak or be kicked! Say, where do you hang out?’ It is all one whether you speak or hold your tongue; they beat you just the same, and then, in a passion, |