Ginx's Baby: His Birth and Other Misfortunes; a SatireJenkins, Edward
General
Ginx's Baby: His Birth and Other Misfortunes; a Satire
Jenkins, Edward
Christian sects -- Fiction; Education -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Satire, English
“We wish him to be kept from any worldly taint, and by-and-by his
saintliness may gain you forgiveness in spite of your heretical
perversity. I cannot permit you to give him unconsecrated milk, and as
we wish to treat you kindly, the holy Father Certificatus has allowed me
to make an arrangement with you, to which you can have no objection--I
mean, that you should let me make the sign of the cross upon your
breasts morning and evening before you suckle your infant. You will
permit me to do that, won't you?”
Conceive of Mrs. Ginx's reply, clothed in choice Westminster English:
it asserted her readiness to cut off her right hand, her feet, to be
hanged, drowned, burned, torn to pieces, in fact to withstand all the
torments ascribed by vulgar tradition to Roman Catholic ingenuity,
and to see her baby “a dead corpse” into the bargain, before she would
submit her Protestant bosom to such an indignity.
“No, mum!” she said; “I couldn't sleep with that on my breast;” and
cried hysterically.
This lower class heretic WAS “brutally refractory.” So thought the
Superioress, and so gave Mrs. Ginx notice to come no more. She went home
rather jubilant--she was a martyr.
II.--The Protestant Detectoral Association.
Ginx's baby was now fed on consecrated pap. But his mother was not a
woman to be silent under her wrongs. From her husband she hid them,
because the subject was forbidden. She poured out her complaint to Mrs.
Spittal and other Protestant matrons. Thus it came to pass that one
day, in Ginx's absence, the good woman was surprised by a visit from a
“gentleman.” He was small, sharp, rapid, dressed in black. He opened his
business at once.
“Mrs. Ginx? Ah! I am the agent of the Protestant Detectoral
Association.”
Mrs. Ginx wiped her best chair and set it for him.
“By great good fortune the secretary received only half an hour ago
intelligence of the shocking instance of Papal aggression of which you
have been the victim.”
To hear her case put so grandly was honey to Mrs. Ginx.
“Well now,” continued the little man, “we are ready to render you every
assistance to save your child from the claws of the Great Dragon. I wish
to know the exact circumstances--let me see--(opening a large pocket
book) I have this memorandum: the child was carried off from his
mother's bedside in broad daylight by a nun accompanied by two priests
and a large body of Irish: is that a correct version?”
“Law, no, sir, it warn't quite like that,” said Mrs. Ginx. “We've 'ad
so many on 'em that Ginx was for drownin' the thirteenth”----The little
man opened his eyes----
“An' he went and gave it away, sir,” said she crying, “to a nun,
sir--ah! ah! ah!--they won't let me see the darlin' now, sir--ah! ah!
ah! because I won't let Missis Spishyosir mark me with the cross, sir,
an' me with as fine a breast o' milk as ever was for 'im, sir--ah! ah!
ah!”
“Hem!” said the little man, “that's different from what I understood.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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