acquaintance, getting earlier through with his work, came home on the

Friday instead of the Saturday, and there was his wife to receive him
reeling drunk. He 'took and gave her a pair o' black eyes,' for

which I pardon him, nailed up the cook-shop door, gave up his
situation, and resigned himself to a life of poverty, with the

workhouse at the end. As the children came to their full age they
fled the house, and established themselves in other countries; some

did well, some not so well; but the father remained at home alone
with his drunken wife, all his sound-hearted pluck and varied

accomplishments depressed and negatived.
Was she dead now? or, after all these years, had he broken the chain,

and run from home like a schoolboy? I could not discover which; but
here at least he was out on the adventure, and still one of the

bravest and most youthful men on board.
'Now, I suppose, I must put my old bones to work again,' said he;

'but I can do a turn yet.'
And the son to whom he was going, I asked, was he not able to support

him?
'Oh yes,' he replied. 'But I'm never happy without a job on hand.

And I'm stout; I can eat a'most anything. You see no craze about
me.'

This tale of a drunken wife was paralleled on board by another of a
drunken father. He was a capable man, with a good chance in life;

but he had drunk up two thriving businesses like a bottle of sherry,
and involved his sons along with him in ruin. Now they were on board

with us, fleeing his disastrous neighbourhood.
Total abstinence, like all ascetical conclusions, is unfriendly to

the most generous, cheerful, and human parts of man; but it could
have adduced many instances and arguments from among our ship's

company. I was, one day conversing with a kind and happy Scotsman,
running to fat and perspiration in the physical, but with a taste for

poetry and a genial sense of fun. I had asked him his hopes in
emigrating. They were like those of so many others, vague and

unfounded; times were bad at home; they were said to have a turn for
the better in the States; a man could get on anywhere, he thought.

That was precisely the weak point of his position; for if he could
get on in America, why could he not do the same in Scotland? But I

never had the courage to use that argument, though it was often on
the tip of my tongue, and instead I agreed with him heartily adding,

with recklessoriginality, 'If the man stuck to his work, and kept
away from drink.'

'Ah!' said he slowly, 'the drink! You see, that's just my trouble.'
He spoke with a simplicity that was touching, looking at me at the

same time with something strange and timid in his eye, half-ashamed,
half-sorry, like a good child who knows he should be beaten. You

would have said he recognised a destiny to which he was born, and
accepted the consequences mildly. Like the merchant Abudah, he was

at the same time fleeing from his destiny and carrying it along with
him, the whole at an expense of six guineas.

As far as I saw, drink, idleness, and incompetency were the three
great causes of emigration, and for all of them, and drink first and

foremost, this trick of getting transported overseas appears to me
the silliest means of cure. You cannot run away from a weakness; you

must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not
now, and where you stand? COELUM NON ANIMAM. Change Glenlivet for

Bourbon, and it is still whisky, only not so good. A sea-voyage will
not give a man the nerve to put aside cheap pleasure; emigration has

to be done before we climb the vessel; an aim in life is the only
fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign

lands, but in the heart itself.
Speaking generally, there is no vice of this kind more contemptible

than another; for each is but a result and outward sign of a soul
tragically ship-wrecked. In the majority of cases, cheap pleasure is

resorted to by way of anodyne. The pleasure-seeker sets forth upon
life with high and difficult ambitions; he meant to be nobly good and

nobly happy, though at as little pains as possible to himself; and it
is because all has failed in his celestialenterprise that you now

behold him rolling in the garbage. Hence the comparative success of
the teetotal pledge; because to a man who had nothing it sets at

least a negative aim in life. Somewhat as prisoners beguile their
days by taming a spider, the reformed drunkard makes an interest out

of abstaining from intoxicating drinks, and may live for that
negation. There is something, at least, NOT TO BE DONE each day; and

a cold triumph awaits him every evening.
We had one on board with us, whom I have already referred to under

the name Mackay, who seemed to me not only a good instance of this
failure in life of which we have been speaking, but a good type of

the intelligence which here surrounded me. Physically he was a small
Scotsman, standing a little back as though he were already carrying

the elements of a corporation, and his looks somewhat marred by the
smallness of his eyes. Mentally, he was endowed above the average.

There were but few subjects on which he could not converse with
understanding and a dash of wit; delivering himself slowly and with

gusto like a man who enjoyed his own sententiousness. He was a dry,
quick, pertinent debater, speaking with a small voice, and swinging

on his heels to launch and emphasise an argument. When he began a
discussion, he could not bear to leave it off, but would pick the

subject to the bone, without once relinquishing a point. An engineer
by trade, Mackay believed in the unlimited perfectibility of all

machines except the human machine. The latter he gave up with
ridicule for a compound of carrion and perverse gases. He had an

appetite for disconnected facts which I can only compare to the
savage taste for beads. What is called information was indeed a

passion with the man, and he not only delighted to receive it, but
could pay you back in kind.

With all these capabilities, here was Mackay, already no longer
young, on his way to a new country, with no prospects, no money, and

but little hope. He was almost tedious in the cynical disclosures of
his despair. 'The ship may go down for me,' he would say, 'now or

to-morrow. I have nothing to lose and nothing to hope.' And again:
'I am sick of the whole damned performance.' He was, like the kind

little man, already quoted, another so-calledvictim of the bottle.
But Mackay was miles from publishing his weakness to the world; laid

the blame of his failure on corrupt masters and a corrupt State
policy; and after he had been one night overtaken and had played the

buffoon in his cups, sternly, though not without tact, suppressed all
reference to his escapade. It was a treat to see him manage this:

the various jesters withered under his gaze, and you were forced to
recognise in him a certain steely force, and a gift of command which

might have ruled a senate.
In truth it was not whisky that had ruined him; he was ruined long

before for all good human purposes but conversation. His eyes were
sealed by a cheap, school-book materialism. He could see nothing in

the world but money and steam-engines. He did not know what you
meant by the word happiness. He had forgotten the simple emotions of

childhood, and perhaps never encountered the delights of youth. He
believed in production, that useful figment of economy, as if it had

been real like laughter; and production, without prejudice to liquor,
was his god and guide. One day he took me to task - novel cry to me

- upon the over-payment of literature. Literary men, he said, were
more highly paid than artisans; yet the artisan made threshing-

machines and butter-churns, and the man of letters, except in the way
of a few useful handbooks, made nothing worth the while. He produced

a mere fancy article. Mackay's notion of a book was HOPPUS'S
MEASURER. Now in my time I have possessed and even studied that

work; but if I were to be left to-morrow on Juan Fernandez, Hoppus's
is not the book that I should choose for my companion volume.

I tried to fight the point with Mackay. I made him own that he had
taken pleasure in reading books otherwise, to his view,

insignificant; but he was too wary to advance a step beyond the
admission. It was in vain for me to argue that here was pleasure

ready-made and running from the spring, whereas his ploughs and
butter-churns were but means and mechanisms to give men the necessary

food and leisure before they start upon the search for pleasure; he
jibbed and ran away from such conclusions. The thing was different,

he declared, and nothing was serviceable but what had to do with
food. 'Eat, eat, eat!' he cried; 'that's the bottom and the top.'

By an odd irony of circumstance, he grew so much interested in this