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