If
the Ginxes and their neighbors preserved any semblance of 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.
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