arse artists seeking only
a petty profit, unhandy, immeasurably impudent; or dress them by your
teaching--teaching which is the highest, noblest, purest, most efficient
function of Government, which ought to be the most lofty ambition of
statesmanship--to be civic corner-stones polished after the similitude
of a palace.

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 divide