ABOUT BABIES.

Patea Mail, 21 August 1880, Page 2

ABOUT BABIES.

Ginx’s Baby is tenderly looked after by Government in this colony—even more tenderly than at Home. Nobody knows Ginx’s baby, and nobody owns him : ho belongs to the State: he is a Government baby. He wasn’t born, but “grow’d,” like Topsy. At six

months old the Government vaccinates him, and serve the brat right! After a few years of dirt-pie making, the Government takes him in hand to make a man of him. It sends him to a Government school, where he gets whacked with a Government rod. At Christmas-time he sits in a corner and eats a Government pie, and says “ What a good boy am I! ” Then, like other good boys, he is taken into the Government service, and handles Government money with Government honesty—never troubling himself about small change. He travels in a Government railway at a price that doesn’t pay for Government grease. He insures his life in a Government office ; and he puts his money—his or other people’s—in a Government savings bank. When he spends more than he gets, he calls his creditors together, and the Government whitewashes him a dark color. If he has the misfortune to die, which sometimes happens, the Government buries him. The Government money which he didn’t pay to his creditors is taken charge of by a Government trustee, and administered for the benefit of Mrs Ginx and the little Ginxes. And so ends this “ strange eventful history ” of Ginx’s baby in New Zealand.