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. A dozen children
overrunning the space in his rooms was then a strain beyond the
endurance of Ginx. Nor had he the heart to try the common plan,
and turn his children out of doors on the chance of their being
picked up in a raid of Sunday School teachers. So he turned out
himself to talk with the humbler spirits of the "Dragon," or
listen sleepily while alehouse demagogues prescribed remedies for
State abuses.

Our friend was nearly as guiltless of knowledge as if Eve had
never rifled the tree whereon it grew. Vacant of policies were
his thoughts; innocent he of ideas of state-craft. He knew there
was a Queen; he had seen her. Lords and Commons were to him vague
deities possessing strange powers. Indeed, he had been present
when some of his better-informed companions had recognized with
cheers certain gentlemen,--of whom Ginx's estimate was expressed
by a reference to his test of superiority to himself in that
which he felt to be greatest within him--"I could lick 'em with
my little finger" --as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the
Prime Minister. Little recked he of their uses or abuses. The