University of Virginia Library

I.—The Milk of Human Kindness, Mother's Milk, and the Milk of the Word.

THE early days of his residence at the Home of the Sisters of Misery, in Winkle Street, was the Eden of Ginx's Baby's existence. Themselves innocent of a mother's experiences, the sisters were free to give play to their affections in a novel direction, and to assume a sort of spiritual maternity that was lucky for the changeling. He was nestled in kind serge-covered arms: kisses rained upon him from chaste lips. A slight scandal thrilled the convent upon the discovery of his sex, which had of course been

a pure matter of conjecture to Sister Pudicitia when she rescued him; but enthusiasm can overcome anything. The awkward questions foreshadowed in the discovery were left to be considered when their growing importance should demand upon them the judgment of the archbishop. Visions of an unusual sanctity to be fostered in the pure regions of the convent, and to be sent on a mission into the world to attest the power of their spiritual discipline, began to haunt the brains of the sequestered nuns. Might not this infant be an embryo saint, destined for a great work in the heretical wilderness out of which he had come? How little healthy food the brains must have had wherein these insane dreams were excited by our innocent baby! Hardly did the sacred spinsters forecast what was in store for them when he should be teething.

But Ginx's Baby was in a religious atmosphere, and that is always surcharged with electricity. His lot must have been above that of any other human being if he could long have remained in such a climate unvisited by thunder. The mother had been permitted to attend at the Home with the same regularity as the milkman, to discharge her maternal duties. Then with the rise of the visionary projects just mentioned the gravest doubts began to agitate the fertile and casuistic mind of the Lady Superior. The holier her ideal St. Ginx of the future, the more to be deplored was any heretical taint in the present. Holy mother! Was it not perhaps eminently perilous to his spiritual purity that an unbeliever like Mrs. Ginx should bring unconsecrated milk into the convent to be administered to this suckling of the Church!

In her uneasiness she appealed to Father Certificatus, the conventual confessor. He gave his opinion in the following letter:—

"The very grave question you have put to me has given me much anxiety. It could not but do so since it occupied, I knew, so fully your own holy reflections. I pondered it during the night while I repeated one hundred Aves on my knees, and I think the Blessed Virgin has vouchsafed her assistance.

"I understood you to say you thought that the physical health of the infant, so singularly and miraculously thrown upon your care, required the offices of his heretic mother, and yet that you felt how inconsistent it was with the noble future we contemplate for him, that

he should receive unorthodox lacteal sustentation. In this you are but following the usage of the Church in all ages, for She has ever enjoined the advantage of infusing Her doctrines into Her children with the mother's milk.

"Three courses only appear to me to be open to us. First, we may try to work upon the mother's feelings, and on behalf of her child induce her to avail herself of the inestimable privileges of the Church in which he is fostered. Secondly, should she repel us —and these lower class heretics are even brutally refractory—we might at least allure her to allow us to make with holy water the sign of the Cross upon the natural reservoirs of infant nourishment each time before she approaches the infant. This, besides overcoming the immediate difficulty and securing

for the child a supply of sanctified food, might open the way for the entrance into her own bosom of the milk of the word. Thirdly, should she reject these proposals, I see nothing for it but to forbid her to have access to her infant, and, commending him to the care of the Holy Mother, to feed him with pap or other suitable nourishment, previously consecrated by me in its crude state, and prepared by the most holy hands of your community. Thus we may hope to shield the young soul in its present freshness from contact with carnal elements.

On receiving this letter the Superioress conferred not with flesh and blood, but sent for Mrs. Ginx. That worthy woman was not

enchanted with her child's position. I have hinted that her faith was simple, but in proportion to its simplicity it was strongly-rooted in her nature. 'Tis not infrequent to find it so. Lengthy creeds and confessions of faith are apt to extend the strength and fervor of belief over too wide a surface. In the close frame of some single article will be concentrated the whole energy of the soul. The first formula, "Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,'' was maintained with a heat that became less intense, though more distributed, in the insertion of an Athanasian creed. Mrs. Ginx's creed was succinct.

MRS. GINX'S PRIMARY CREED.

• I believe in God, giver of bread, meat, money, and health.

This she maintained, with indifferent ritual

and devotional observances. But there was to Mrs. Ginx's faith a corollary or secondary creed, only needed to meet special emergencies.

MRS. GINX'S SECONDARY CREED.

• 1. I believe in the Church of England.
• 2. I believe in Heaven and Hell.
• 3. (A negative article) I hate Popery, priests, and the Devil.

When her husband made his fatal gift to the nun, this third article of his wife's belief, or unbelief, stirred up and waxed aggressive.

Said the Lady Superior, "My good woman, your child thrives under the care of Holy Mother Church.''

"Yes'm, he thrives well,'' replies Mrs. Ginx, repeating no more of Sister Suspiciosa's sentence,

"an' I've 'ad more milk than ever for the darlin' this time, thank God.''

"And the Holy Virgin.''

"I dunno about her,'' cries Mrs. Ginx emphatically, perhaps not seeing congruity between a virgin and the subject of thankfulness.

"And the Holy Virgin,'' repeated the nun, "who interests herself in all mothers. She has thus blessed you that your child may be made strong for the work of the Church. Do you not see a miracle is worked within you to prove Her goodness? This, no doubt, is an evidence to you of Her wish to bless you and take you for Her own. I beseech you listen to Her voice, and come and enter Her fold.''

"If you mean the Virgin Mary, mum, I ain't a idolater, beggin' yer parding,'' says Mrs. Ginx; "an' tho' I wouldn't for the world

offend them as has been so kind to my child, an' saved it from that deer little creetur bein' thrown over Wauxhall Bridge—an' Ginx ought to be ashamed of hisself, so he ought— I ain't Papish, mum, and I ain't dispoged, with twelve on 'em there at home all Protestant to the back bone, to turn Papish now, an' so I 'ope an' pray, mum,'' says Mrs. Ginx, roaring and crying, "you ain't agoin' to make Papish of my flesh an' blood. O dear! O dear!''

The Lady Superior shut her ears; she had raised a familiar spirit and could not lay it. She temporized.

"You know your husband has given the child to us. It will be called the infant Ambrosius.''

"Dear, dear!'' sighed Mrs. Ginx, "what a name! ''

"We wish him to be kept from any worldly taint, and by-and-by his saintliness may gain you forgiveness in spite of your heretical perversity. I cannot permit you to give him unconsecrated milk, and as we wish to treat you kindly, the holy Father Certificatus has allowed me to make an arrangement with you, to which you can have no objection—I mean, that you should let me make the sign of the cross upon your breasts morning and evening before you suckle your infant. You will permit me to do that, won't you?''

Conceive of Mrs. Ginx's reply, clothed in choice Westminster English: it asserted her readiness to cut off her right hand, her feet, to be hanged, drowned, burned, torn to pieces, in fact to withstand all the torments ascribed by vulgar tradition to Roman Catholic ingenuity, and to see her baby "a dead corpse''

into the bargain, before she would submit her Protestant bosom to such an indignity.

"No, mum!'' she said; "I couldn't sleep with that on my breast;'' and cried hysterically.

This lower class heretic was "brutally refractory.'' So thought the Superioress, and so gave Mrs. Ginx notice to come no more. She went home rather jubilant—she was a martyr.