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"He's going to drown it!" came the chorus. "Going to drown it? Nonsense!" said the officer. "I am," said Ginx. "But, bless my heart, that's murder!" "No, 'tain't," said Ginx. "I've twelve already at home. Starvashon's shure to kill this 'un. Best save it the trouble." The officer declares this is quite contrary to law and he recites the law, but that doesn't affect Ginx.
Grecian wisdom once attempted to improve on "natural selection" and Greece is the ghost of a vanished glory. Why shouldn't Ginx have drowned his Baby or himself before the multiplication in the result of which the Baby was a unit?
Ginx, feeling another infant straw would break his back. determined to drown the straw. Mrs. Ginx, clinging to No. Twelve, listened aghast. The stream of her affections, though divided into twelve rills, would not have been exhausted in twenty-four, and her soul, forecasting its sorrows, yearned after that nonentity Number Thirteen.
Ginx sought to comfort her by the suggestion that she could not have any more. But she knew better. After eighteen months the baby was born. Ginx thought it all out before the event. "He wouldn't go on the parish. He couldn't keep another youngster to save his life. He would not take charity. There was nothing to do but drown the baby."
Ginx worked hard and gave his wife his earnings, less sixpence, with which sum he retreated, on Sundays, from his twelve children, to the ale-house to listen sleepily while ale-house demagogues prescribed remedies for State abuses. He was ignorant of policies and issues; simply one of a million victims of the theories upon which statesmen experiment in legislation and taxation.
The nun takes the child, and Ginx, in gratitude for her assurance that the child shall not be sent back to him, stands treat for the crowd. The child's life in the convent is material for some good satiric writing upon the question of his salvation.
Out on the street, with the crowd following him, Ginx stopped to consider. "It is all very well to talk about drowning your baby, but to do it you need two things water and opportunity. He turned toward Vauxhall Bridge. The crowd cried "Murder!" "Leave me alone nabors," shouted Ginx; "this is my own baby and I'll do wot I likes with it.
If every one would do a little good for the poor, the unfortunate, the afflicted, the sum of all our doing would be a great deal of good. Take a penny from every person in the United States and give it to one man and he has seven hundred thousand dollars. Every Ginx's Baby in any land can be helped somewhat, and Ginx himself must do his share, to the full limit of his capacity for doing.
She confessed all about the Baby, and so the guardians traced the Baby's father and delivered to Ginx, through an agent, the famous child, with the benediction "There he is; damn him!" Mrs. Ginx couldn't recognize the Baby. His brothers and sisters would have nothing to do with him.
"The name of the father of Ginx's Baby was Ginx. By a not unexceptional coincidence, its mother was Mrs. Ginx. The gender of Ginx's Baby was masculine." That is the first paragraph of the book, and there you have a hint of the flippant flavor; also a very strong suggestion of Mr. Charles Dickens. The hero of the book was a thirteenth child. Ominously humorous!
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