Ginx's Baby [19]
were preached on his behalf in a score of chapels. The collections amounted to L 800, a sum increased by donations and subscriptions to the handsome total of L 1360 10s. 3 1/2d. It will be seen hereafter what the committee did with the baby, but I happen to have an account of what became of the funds. They were spent as follows, according to a balance sheet never submitted to the subscribers:-- Pounds s. d. Committee-rooms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 0 0 2 Secretaries employed by the Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 0 0 Agents, canvassing, &c . . . . . . . . . . 88 6 2 Printing Notices, Placards, Pamphlets, a "Daily Bulletin of Health," "Life of Ginx's Baby," "Protestant Babyhood, a Tale," "The Cradle of an Infant Martyr," "A Snatched Brand," and other Works issued by the Committee . . . . . . 596 13 5 Advertisements of Meetings, Sermons, &c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 1 1 Legal Expenses . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 77 6 8 Stationery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 10 0 Postage, Firing, and Sundries . . . . . . . 27 19 2 ---------------- Total Pounds 1251 16 6 ================ This left L 108 13s. 9 1/2d. for the baby's keep. No child could have been more thoroughly discussed, preached and written about, advertised, or advised by counsel; but his resources dwindled in proportion to these advantages. Benevolent subscribers too seldom examine the financial items of a report: had any who contributed to this fund seen the balance sheet they might have grudged that so little of their bounty went to make flesh, bone, and comfort for the object of it. A cynic would tell them that to look sharply after the disposal of their guerdon was half the gift. Their indifference was akin to that satirized by the poet-- "Prodigus et stultus dedit quae spernit et odit." In an age of luxury we are grown so luxurious as to be content to pay agents to do our good deeds for us; but they charge us three hundred per cent. for the privilege. X.--The Force--and a Specimen of its Weakness. Ginx's baby had been discovered by a policeman swaddled in a penny paper, distressingly familiar to metropolitan travellers by rail. To omit the details of his treatment at the hands of that great institution, "The Force," would be invidious. The member thereof who fell in with him was walking a back street, sighting doors with his bull's-eye. He was provided with massive boots, so that a thief could hear him coming a hundred yards off; he was personally tall and unwieldy, and a dexterous commissioner had invented a dress designed to enhance these qualities--a heavy coat, a cart-horse belt, and a round cape. He had been carefully drilled not to walk more than three miles an hour. He was not a little startled when the rays of his lamp fell upon a struggling newspaper, out of which, as from a shell, came mysterious cries. He took up a corner of the paper and peeped in upon the face of Ginx's Baby; then he occupied a quarter of an hour in embarrassing reflections. A nearly naked child crying in the cold ought to be housed as soon as possible, but X 99 was ON HIS BEAT, and those magic words chained him to certain limits. This, of course, was the rule under a former commissioner, and every one knows that such absurd strategy has been abolished in the existing regime. At that time, however, each watchman had his beat, to leave which was neglect of duty, except with a prisoner, and then it was neglect of all the householders within the magic compass. Had X 99 heard the baby crying across the street, which was part of the beat of X 101, he would have passed on with a cheery heart, for the case would have been beyond his jurisdiction. Unhappily the baby was on his beat, and he was delivered from the temptation of transferring it to the other by the appearance of X 101's bull's-eye not far off. What was he to do? The station was a mile away--the