VI.—Parochial Benevolence—and another translation.
THE authorities of St. Bartimeus did not take
kindly to the charge imposed upon them by
the Queen's Bench. Some of the Guardians
privately hinted to the master that it was
unnecessary to overfeed the infant. They did
not burthen him with much clothing, and
what he had was shared with many lively
companions. When you, good matron, look
at your little pink-cheeked daughter, so clean
and so cosy in her pretty cot, waking to see
the well-faced nurse, or you, still sweeter to
her eyes, watching above her dreams, perhaps
you ought to stop a moment to contrast the
scene with the sad tableaux you may get
sight of not far away. * * * Ginx's Baby
was not an ill-favored child. He had inherited
his father's frame and strength: these
helped him through the changes we are
relating. What if these capacities had, by
simple nourishing food, cleanly care-taking,
and brighter, kindlier associations, been
trained into full working order? Left alone
or ill-tended they were daily dwindling, and
the depreciation was going on not solely at
the expense of little Ginx, but of the whole
community. To reduce his strength one-half
was to reduce one-half his chances of
independence, and to multiply the prospects
of his continuous application for
STATE AID.
The money spent in stopping a hole in a
Dutch dyke is doubtless better invested than
if it were to be retained until a vast breach
had laid half a kingdom under water. Surely
your Hollander would agree to be mulcted in
one-third of his fortune rather than run the
hazard!
Every day through this wealthy country
there are men and women busy marring
the little images of God, that are by-and-by
to be part of its public-shadowing young
spirits, repressing their energy, sapping their
vigor or failing to make it up, corrupting
their nature by foul associations, moral and
physical. Some are doing it by special
license of the devil, others by Act of Parliament,
others by negligence or niggardliness.
Could you teach or force these people—many
unconsciously engaged in the vile work—to
run together, as men alarmed by sudden
danger, and throw around a helpless generation
influences and a care more akin to your
own home ideal, would you not transfigure
the next epoch—would not your labor and
sacrifice be a GOD-WORK, reaching out
weighty, fruit-laden branches far into the
grateful future? 'Tis by feeling and enjoining
everywhere the need of such a movement as
this that you, O all-powerful woman! can
carry your will into the play of a great
economic and social reform. Society that
recognizes not a root-truth like that is sowing
the wind—God knows what it will reap.
So the Guardians, keeping carefully within
the law, neglected nothing that could sap
little Ginx's vitality, deaden his happiest
instincts, derange moral action, cause hope
to die within his infant breast almost as soon
as it were born. Good God!
The items the Board were really entitled to
charge the rate-payers as supplied to our hero
were—
- Dirt,
- Fleas,
- Foul air,
- Chances of catching skin diseases,
fevers, &c.,
- Vile company,
- Neglect,
- Occasional cruelty, and
- A small supply of bad food and
clothing.
Every pauper was to them an obnoxious
charge by any and every means to be reduced
to a
minimum or
nil. Ginx's Baby was
reduced to a minimum. His constitution
enabled him to protest against reduction to
nil. But, just after the bills of costs had been
taxed, mulcting the rate-payers of St. Bartimeus
in a sum of more than £1,600, the
Guardians were made aware of the name and
origin of their charge. One of the persons
who had deserted him was arrested for theft,
and among other articles in her possession
were some of the Baby's clothes. She confessed
the whole story, and declared that the
child left in Nether Place was no other than the
Protestant Baby, son of Ginx, about whom so
much stir had been made two years before.
The Guardians were not long in tracing Ginx,
and, at his quarters in Rosemary Street, the
hapless changeling was one day delivered by
a deputy relieving-officer, with the benediction,
by me sadly recorded—
"There he is, d—n him!''
I am sure if the Guardians had been there
they would have said:
"Amen.''
