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! Ever