Ginxs Baby, A Satire | Page 7

Administration, and Foreign
Policy? If you do not find out some way to do this he may turn round
upon you--I hope he may-- and insist on annually-elected parliaments,
and thus oblige ambitious state-mongers, in the rivalry of place, to
come to him and declare more often their wishes and objects. Other
attractions may be found in that solution: such as the untying of some
knots of electoral difficulty, and removing incitements to corruption.
Ten thousand pounds for one year's power were a high price even to a
contractor. Think then whether at any cost some general political
education must not be attempted, since there is a spirit breathing on the
waters, and how it shall convulse them is no indifferent matter to you
or to me. Everywhere around us are unhewn rocks stirred with a strange
motion. Leave these chaotic fragments of humanity to be hewn into
rough shape by coarse artists seeking only a petty profit, unhandy,
immeasurably impudent; or dress them by your teaching--teaching
which is the highest, noblest, purest, most efficient function of
Government, which ought to be the most lofty ambition of
statesmanship--to be civic corner-stones polished after the similitude of

a palace. V.--Reasons and Resolves. Ginx has been waiting through
three chapters to explain his truculence upon the birth of his twelfth
child. Much explanation is not necessary. When he looked round his
nest and saw the many open mouths about him, he might well be
appalled to have another added to them. His children were not
chameleons, yet they were already forced to be content with a
proportion of air for their food. And even the air was bad. They were
pallid and pinched. How they were clad will ever be a mystery, save to
the poor woman who strung the limp rags together and Him who
watched the noble patience and sacrifice of a daily heroism. Of her own
unsatisfied cravings, and the dense motherly horrors that sometimes
brooded over her while she nursed these infants, let me refrain from
speaking, since if as vividly depicted as they were real, you, Madam,
could not endure to read of them. Her poor, unintelligent mind clung
tenaciously to the controverted aphorism, "Where God sends mouths he
sends food to fill them." Believing that there was a God, and that He
must be kind, she trusted in this as a truth, and perhaps an all-seeing
eye reading some quaint characters on her simple heart, viewed them
not too nearly, but had regard to their general import, for, as she
expressed it, "Thank God! they had always been able to get along." In
the rush and tumult of the world it is likely that the summum bonum of
nine-tenths of mankind is embraced in that purely negative
happiness--to get along. Not to perish: to open eyes, however wearily,
on a new morning: to satisfy with something, no matter what, a craving
appetite: to close eyes at night under some shadow or shelter: or, it may
be, in certain ranks to walk another day free from bankruptcy or arrest:
Thank Heaven, they are just able to get along! Convinced that another
infant straw would break his back, Ginx calmly proposed to disconcert
physical, moral, and legal relations by drowning the straw Mrs. Ginx
clinging to Number Twelve listened aghast. If a mother can forget her
sucking child she was not that mother. The stream of her affections,
though divided into twelve rills, would not have been exhausted in
twenty-four, and her soul, forecasting its sorrow, yearned after that
nonentity Number Thirteen. She pictured to herself the hapless
strangeling borne away from her bosom by those strong arms, and--in
fact she sobbed so that Ginx grew ashamed, and sought to comfort her
by the suggestion that she could not have any more. But she knew

better. VI.--The Antagonism of Law and Necessity. In eighteen months,
notwithstanding resolves, menaces, and prophecies, GINX'S BABY
was born. The mother hid the impending event long, from the father.
When he came to know it, he fixed his determination by much thought
and a little extra drinking. He argued thus: "He wouldn't go on the
parish. He couldn't keep another youngster to save his life. He had
never taken charity and never would. There was nothink to do with it
but drown it!" Female friends of Mrs. Ginx bruited his intentions about
the neighborhood, so that her "time" was watched for with interest. At
last it came. One afternoon Ginx, lounging home, saw signs of
excitement around his door in Rosemary Street. A knot of women and
children awaited his coming. Passing through them he soon learned
what had happened. Poor Mrs. Ginx! Without staying to think or argue,
he took up the little stranger and bore it from the room---- "O, O, O,
Ginx!