" 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! Every week he
threw into the lap of Mrs. Ginx the eighteen or twenty shillings
which his strength and temperance enabled him continuously to
earn, less sixpence reserved for the public-house, whither he
retreated on Sundays after the family dinner.
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