absurdity of "Reasoning in a
Circle."

* * * * *

A GOOD GROUND FOR A BAD JOKE.--Why is a lodging on the ground floor a
degradation? Because it's a-basement!

* * * * *

AN ALBANY FOR THE MILLION.

[Illustration: T]

To the health of towns, moral and physical, it is universally agreed,
that one indispensable condition is the abolition of Slums. But then
what is to become of the Slummites? The low neighborhoods may be done
away with, but there is no doing away with the low neighbours; who
cannot be disposed of by fire and water and poison, along with the bugs
and rats and other vermin that run upon four, or more, legs. Besides, in
spite of all appearances to the contrary, it is certain that they are
human beings; so that we cannot, consistently either with Christianity
or common law, get rid of them exactly as if they were black beetles.
And if routed out of their courts and alleys, they will crawl or lie
about the streets, or, making themselves still more unpleasant, die
under our noses.

It therefore becomes necessary to provide them with proper abodes.
Suburban kennels and pigsties will not do, as it is necessary that they
should reside near enough to their work. Model Lodging Houses,
therefore, well supplied with water, and arranged in all other respects
with reference to the prevention of effluvia, have been suggested
instead, as intramural habitations for the inferior classes. To these
the only objection is their name.

The gentlemen who inhabit a certain double row of buildings contiguous
to and parallel with the Burlington Arcade would be, most of them,
disgusted, if those edifices were spoken of as Model Lodging Houses.

But there is good reason to believe that not only have the lower classes
the same number of members--in an anatomical if not in a parliamentary
sense--as the higher, but that they are really endowed with essentially
even the same passions and feelings. Among other sentiments it has been
ascertained that they possess those of pride and vanity, which are not
only exasperated by scorn and contumely--as when they are called the
scum of the earth, the riff-raff, and the rabble--but also by
contemptuous patronage: by all sorts of badges, whether metallic or
verbal. There is something of the latter sort of badge in the term
"Model Lodging Houses." The expression is low; suggests an invidious
distinction of caste: a state of degr