A fourth resolution was adopted, "That | met. Instant measures were taken to recothe subject should be treated in the Metro-ver the child and place him in good hands. politan pulpits on the next Sabbath, and a The duchess again provided baby-clothes. collection taken up in the various churches The next Sunday sermons were preached for the benefit of the infant." This prom- on his behalf in a score of chapels. The ised well for Master Ginx's future. collections amounted to £800, a sum in. creased by donations and subscriptions to the handsome total of £1360 10s. 34d. The meeting had lasted five hours, and while they were discussing him the child grew hungry. In the tumult every one had forgotten the subject of it, and now it was over, they dispersed without a thought of him. But he would not allow those near him at all events to overlook his presence. Some, foreseeing that awkwardness was impending, slipped away; while three or four stayed to ask what was to be done with him. "Hand him over to the custody of the Chairman," said a Mr. Dove. 66 "I should be most happy," said he, but Mrs. Trumpeter is out of smoothly, town. Could your dear wife take him, Mr. Dove?" Mr. Dove's wife was otherwise engaged. The Secretary was unmarried-chambers at Nincome's inn. In the midst of their distress a woman who had been hanging about the hall near the platform, came forward and offered to take charge of him, " for the sake of the cause." Every one was relieved. After her name and address had been hastily noted, the Protestant baby was placed in her arms. My Lord Evergood, the Chairman, the clergy, the Secretary, and the mob went home rejoicing. Some hours after, Ginx's Baby, stripped of the duchess's beautiful robes, was found by a policeman, lying on a doorstep in one of the narrow streets, not a hundred yards behind the Philopragmon. By an ironical chance he was wrapped in a copy of the largest daily paper in the world. At every breakfast-table in town next morning the report of the great Protestant meeting was read, and a further report in leaded type, of the discovery of Ginx's Baby at a later period of the evening by a policeman. A pretty comment on the proceedings! The Good Samaritan put his patient on his ass and carried him to an inn; while the priest and the Levite, though the latter looked at him, at least let him alone. To have called a public meeting to discuss his fate before deserting him, would have been a refinement of inhumanity. The committee were rather ashamed when they VOL. III. 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: This left £108 13s. 94d. 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. 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 Benevolent subscribers "Prodigus et stultus dedit quæ 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. * * * AMATEUR DEBATING IN A HIGH LEGISLATIVE | away. People were always making exag BODY. While Sir Charles was trying to get the Government to "give him a night" to debate the Ginx's Baby case, and while associations were being formed in the metropolis for disposing of him by expatriation or otherwise, a busy peer, without notice to anybody, suddenly brought the subject before the House of Lords. As he had never seen the Baby and knew nothing or very little about him, I need scarcely report the elaborate speech in which he asked for aristocratic sympathy on his behalf. He proposed to send him to the Antipodes at the expense of the nation. The minister for the Accidental Accompaniments of the Empire was a clever man -keen, genial, subtle, two-edged, a gentlemanly and not thorough disciple of Machiavel; able to lead parliamentary forlorn hopes and plant flags on breaches, or to cover retreats with brilliant skirmishing; deft, but never deep; much moved too by the opinions of his permanent staff. These on the night in question had plied him well with hackneyed objections; but to see him get up and relieve himself of them; the air of originality, the really original air he threw around them: the absurd light which he turned full on the weaknesses of his noble friend's propositions, was as beautiful to an indifferent critic as it was saddening to the man who had at heart the sorrows of his kind. If that minister lived long he would be forced to adopt and advocate in as pretty a manner the policy he was dissecting. Lord Munnibagge, a great authority in economic matters, said that a weaker case had never been presented to Parliament. To send away Ginx's Baby to a colony at imperial expense was at once to rob the pockets of the rich and to decrease our labor-power. There was no necessity for it. Ginx's Baby could not starve in a country like this. He (Lord Munnibagge) had never heard of a case of a baby starving. There was no such wide-spread distress as was represented by the noble lord. There were occasional periods of stagnation in trade, and no doubt in these periods the poorer classes would suffer; but trade was elastic; and even if it were granted that the present was a period when employment had failed, the time was not far off when trade would recuperate. (Cheers.) Ginx's Baby and all other babies would not then wish to go gerated statements about the condition of the poor. He (Lord Munnibagge) did not credit them. He believed the country, though temporarily depressed by financial collapses, to be in a most healthy state. (Hear, hear.) It was absurd to say otherwise, when it was shown by the Board of Trade returns that we were growing rich er every day. (Cheers.) Of course Ginx's baby must be growing richer with the rest. Was not that a complete answer to the noble lord's plaintive outcries? (Cheers and laughter.) That the population of a country was a great fraction of its wealth was an elementary principle of political economy. He thought, from the high rates of wages, that there were not too many but too few laborers in the country. He should oppose the motion. (Cheers.) Two or three noble lords repeated similar platitudes, guarding themselves as carefully from any reference to facts, or to the question whether high rates of wages might not be the concomitants simply of high prices of necessaries, or to the yet wider question whether colonial development might not have something to do with progress at home. The noble lord who had rushed unprepared into the arena was unequal to the forces marshalled against him, and withdrew his motion. Thus the great debate collapsed. The Lords were relieved that an awkward question had so easily been shifted. The newspapers on the ministerial side declared that this debate had proved the futility of the Ginx's Baby Expatriation question. "So able an authority as Lord Munnibagge had established that there was no necessity for the interference of Government in the case of Ginx's Baby or any other babies or persons. The lucid and decisive statement of the Secretary for the Accidental Accompaniments of the Empire had shown how impossible it was for the Imperial Government to take part in a great scheme of Expatriation; how impolitic to endeavor to affect the ordinary laws of free movement to the Colonies." Surely after this the Expatriation people hid their lights under a bushel! The government refused to find a night for Sir Charles Sterling, and after the Lords' Debate he did not see a way to force a motion in the Lower House. Meanwhile Ginx's Baby once more decided a turn in his own fate. Tired of the slow life of the Club, and shivering amid the chill indifference of his patrons, he borrowed without leave some clothes from an inmate's room, with a few silver forks and spoons, and decamped. Whether the baronet and the Club were bashful of public ridicule or glad to be rid of the charge, I know not, but no attempt was made to recover him. WHAT GINX'S BABY DID WITH HIMSELF. Our hero was nearly fifteen years old when he left the Club to plunge into the world. He was not long in converting his spoils into money, and a very short time in spending it. Then he had to pit his wits against starvation, and some of his throws were desperate. Wherever he went the world seemed terribly full. If he answered an advertisement for an errand-boy, there were a score kicking their heels at the rendezvous before him. Did he try to learn a useful trade, thousands of adepts were not only ready to under-bid him, but to knock him on the head for an interloper. trace a white coruscation of foam spreading out into the darkness, instantly to dissipate and be lost for ever. 66 I did not then know what form it was that swilled down below the glistening current. Had I known that it was Ginx's Baby I should perhaps have thought: Society, which, in the sacred names of Law and Charity, forbad the father to throw his child over Vauxhall Bridge, at a time when he was alike unconscious of life and death, has at last itself driven him over the parapet in to the greedy waters." Philosophers, Philanthropists, Politicians, and Protestants, Poor-law Ministers and Parish officers-while you have been theorizing and discussing, debating, wrangling, legislating and administering-Good God! gentlemen, between you all, where has Ginx's Baby gone to? HOUSE. [WILL CARLETON, author of Farm Ballads and other Even the thieves, to whom he gravitated, OVER THE HILL TO THE POORwere jealous of his accession, because there were too many competitors already in their department. Through his career of penury, of honest and dishonest callings, of 'scapes and captures, imprisonments and other punishments, a year's reading of Metropolitan Police Reports would furnish the exact counterpart. collections of poems, was born in Hudson, Michigan, in 1845. Receiving a common school and farm education, he taught school, entered Hillsdale College, where he graduated in 1865, and became a journalist and versewriter. His realistic poems, like "Betsey and I are out," and the following specimen, are full of quaint and homely expression and deep touches of humor and pathos.] I don't know how many years after his flight into Pall Mall, one dim midnight, I, returning from Richmond, lounged over Over the hill to the poor-house I'm trudgin' my weary Vauxhall Bridge, listening to the low lap- way,ping current beneath the arches-looking | I, a woman of seventy, and only a trifle gray,— above to the stars and along the dark pol-I, who am smart an' chipper, for all the years I've told ished surface that reflected a thousand lights As many another woman that 's only half as old. in its undulations,-feeling the awfulness clear! queer! Many a step I 've taken a toilin' to and fro, What is the use of heapin' on me a pauper's shame? of the dense, suppressed life that was wrapt Over the hill to the poor-house,-I can't quite make it within the gloom and calm of the hour. I suddenly saw a shadow, a human shadow, Over the hill to the poor-house, it seems so horrid that at the sound of my footsteps quickly crossed my dreamy vision-quickly, noiselessly came and went before my eyes until it stood up high and outlined against the strangely-mingled haze. It looked like the ghost of a slight-formed man, hatless and coatless, and for a moment I saw at his upper extremity the dull flash as of a human face in the gloom, before the shadow leaped out far into the night. Splash! When my startled eyes looked down upon the glancing waving ebony, I thought I could I Am I lazy or crazy? am I blind or lame? But charity ain't no favor, if one can live without. am willin' and anxious an' ready any day Once I was young an' han'some,-I was, upon my soul,- | So 'twas only a few days before the thing was done.- For any kind of a reason, that I was in their way. "Tain't no use of boastin', or talkin' over free, And when to John I was married, sure he was good and But he and all the neighbors would own I done my part; And so we worked together; and life was hard, but gay, So we worked for the childr'n, and raised 'em every one; Worked for 'em summer and winter, just as we ought to 've done; They was a family of themselves, and I another one; But I never have seen a house that was big enough for An' I never could speak to suit her, never could please An' it made me independent, an' then I didn't try ; 'Twas easy to discover that there wasn't room for me. An' then I went to Thomas, the oldest son I've got, And Thomas said I needn't think I was comin' there to Only perhaps we humored 'em, which some good folks An' then I wrote to Rebecca, my girl who lives out West, condemn, And to Isaac, not far from her-some twenty miles at best; But every couple's childr'n's a heap the best to them. Strange how much we think of our blessed little ones!— sons; And one of 'em said 'twas too warm there for any one so old, And t'other had an opinion the climate was too cold. And God He made that rule of love; but when we 're So they have shirked and slighted me, an' shifted me old and gray, about I've noticed it sometimes somehow fails to work the So they have well-nigh soured me, an' wore my old heart other way. Strange, another thing; when our boys and girls was grown, And when, exceptin' Charley, they 'd left us there alone; When John he nearer an' nearer come, an' dearer seemed to be, The Lord of Hosts He come one day an' took him away from me. Still I was bound to struggle, an' never to cringe or Still I worked for Charley, for Charley was now my all; or frown, Till at last he went a courtin', and brought a wife from She was somewhat dressy, an' had n't a pleasant smile,- An' I told her once, 'fore company (an' it almost made That I never swallowed a grammar, or 'et a 'rithmetic. out; But still I've borne up pretty well, an' wasn't much put down, Till Charley went to the poor-master, an' put me on the town. Over the hill to the poor-house-my childr'n dear, good- Many a night I've watched you when only God was nigh OVER THE HILL FROM THE POOR I, who was always counted, they say, Tom could save what twenty could earn; But givin' was somethin' he ne'er would learn; But I bought the old cottage, through and Of some one Charley had sold it to; But "Honor thy father and mother" he To fix it up as it was of old. So over the hill to the poor-house! As for Susan, her heart was kind For one she loved; an' that 'ere one An' all o' our folks ranked well, you see, I served my sentence-a bitter pill But when this neighbor he wrote to me, The same big fire-place, wide and high, Then-over the hill to the poor-house! With a team an' cutter I started away; Come over the hill from the poor-house!" She didn't faint; she knelt by my side, An' maybe it wasn't a pleasant sight, But I've learned one thing; an' it cheers a man With over the hill from the poor-house. WILL CARLETON. |