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.
