Ginxs Baby, A Satire | Page 5

the house were provided with a single office in the
corner of the yard. It had once been capped by a cistern, long since
rotted away--
* * * * * The street was at one time the prey of the gas company; at
another, of the drainage contractors. They seemed to delight in turning
up the fetid soil, cutting deep trenches through various strata of filth,
and piling up for days or weeks matter that reeked with vegetable and
animal decay. One needs not affirm that Rosemary Street was not so
called from its fragrance. If the Ginxes and their neighbors preserved

any semblance of health in this place, the most popular guardian on the
board must own it a miracle. They, poor people, knew nothing of
"sanitary reform," "sanitary precautions," "zymotics," "endemics,"
"epidemics," "deodorizers," or "disinfectants." They regarded disease
with the apathy of creatures who felt it to be inseparable from humanity,
and with the fatalism of despair. Gin was their cardinal prescription,
not for cure, but for oblivion: "Sold everywhere." A score of palaces
flourished within call of each other in that dismal district--garish, rich-
looking dens, drawing to the support of their vulgar glory the means,
the lives, the eternal destinies of the wrecked masses about them.
Veritable wreckers they who construct these haunts, viler than the
wretches who place false beacons and plunder bodies on the beach.
Bring down the real owners of these places, and show them their deadly
work! Some of them leading Philanthropists, eloquent at Missionary
meetings and Bible Societies, paying tribute to the Lord out of the
pockets of dying drunkards, fighting glorious battles for slaves, and
manfully upholding popular rights. My rich publican--forgive the
pun--before you pay tithes of mint and cummin, much more before you
claim to be a disciple of a certain Nazarene, take a lesson from one who
restored fourfold the money he had wrung from honest toil, or reflect
on the case of the man to whom it was said, "Go sell all thou hast, and
give to the poor." The lips from which that counsel dropped offered
some unpleasant alternatives, leaving out one, however, which
nowadays may yet reach you--the contempt of your kind. III.--Work
and Ideas. I return again to Ginx's menace to his wife, who was
suckling her infant at the time on the bed. For her he had an animal
affection that preserved her from unkindness, even in his cups. His
hand had never unmanned itself by striking her, and rarely indeed did it
injure any one else. He wrestled not against flesh and blood, or powers,
or principalities, or wicked spirits in high places. He struggled with
clods and stones, and primeval chaos. His hands were horny with the
fight, and his nature had perhaps caught some of the dull ruggedness of
the things wherewith he battled. Hard and with a will had he worked
through the years of wedded life, and, to speak him fair, he had acted
honestly, within the limits of his knowledge and means, for the good of
his family. How narrow were those limits! Every week he threw into
the lap of Mrs. Ginx the eighteen or twenty shillings which his strength

and temperance enabled him continuously to earn, less sixpence
reserved for the public-house, whither he retreated on Sundays after the
family dinner. A dozen children overrunning the space in his rooms
was then a strain beyond the endurance of Ginx. Nor had he the heart to
try the common plan, and turn his children out of doors on the chance
of their being picked up in a raid of Sunday School teachers. So he
turned out himself to talk with the humbler spirits of the "Dragon," or
listen sleepily while alehouse demagogues prescribed remedies for
State abuses. Our friend was nearly as guiltless of knowledge as if Eve
had never rifled the tree whereon it grew. Vacant of policies were his
thoughts; innocent he of ideas of state-craft. He knew there was a
Queen; he had seen her. Lords and Commons were to him vague deities
possessing strange powers. Indeed, he had been present when some of
his better-informed companions had recognized with cheers certain
gentlemen,--of whom Ginx's estimate was expressed by a reference to
his test of superiority to himself in that which he felt to be greatest
within him--"I could lick 'em with my little finger" --as the Chancellor
of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister. Little recked he of their uses
or abuses. The functions of Government were to him Asian mysteries.
He only felt that it ought to have a strong arm, like the brawny member
wherewith he preserved order in his domestic kingdom, and therefore
generally associated Government with the Police. In his view these
were to clear away evil-doers and