Ginx's Baby [2]
at night, be thrown out of the front windows, was there collected, and seldom, if ever, removed. What became of it? What becomes of countless such accretions in like places? Are a large proportion of these filthy atoms absorbed by human creatures living and dying, instead of being carried away by scavengers and inspectors? The forty-five big and little lodgers in 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.
* * * * * 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.