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Essays of Travel-Part5_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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discussion that he let the hour slip by unnoticed and had to go



without his tea. He had enough sense and humour, indeed he had no

lack of either, to have chuckled over this himself in private; and



even to me he referred to it with the shadow of a smile.

Mackay was a hot bigot. He would not hear of religion. I have seen



him waste hours of time in argument with all sorts of poor human

creatures who understood neither him nor themselves, and he had had



the boyishness to dissect and criticise even so small a matter as the

riddler's definition of mind. He snorted aloud with zealotry and the



lust for intellectual battle. Anything, whatever it was, that seemed

to him likely to discourage the continued passionate production of



corn and steam-engines he resented like a conspiracy against the

people. Thus, when I put in the plea for literature, that it was



only in good books, or in the society of the good, that a man could

get help in his conduct, he declared I was in a different world from



him. 'Damn my conduct!' said he. 'I have given it up for a bad job.

My question is, "Can I drive a nail?"' And he plainly looked upon me



as one who was insidiously seeking to reduce the people's annual

bellyful of corn and steam-engines.



It may be argued that these opinions spring from the defect of

culture; that a narrow and pinching way of life not only exaggerates



to a man the importance of material conditions, but indirectly, by

denying him the necessary books and leisure, keeps his mind ignorant



of larger thoughts; and that hence springs this overwhelming concern

about diet, and hence the bald view of existence professed by Mackay.



Had this been an English peasant the conclusion would be tenable.

But Mackay had most of the elements of a liberal education. He had



skirted metaphysical and mathematical studies. He had a thoughtful

hold of what he knew, which would be exceptional among bankers. He



had been brought up in the midst of hot-house piety, and told, with

incongruous pride, the story of his own brother's deathbed ecstasies.



Yet he had somehow failed to fulfil himself, and was adrift like a

dead thing among external circumstances, without hope or lively



preference or shaping aim. And further, there seemed a tendency

among many of his fellows to fall into the same blank and unlovely



opinions. One thing, indeed, is not to be learned in Scotland, and

that is the way to be happy. Yet that is the whole of culture, and



perhaps two-thirds of morality. Can it be that the Puritan school,

by divorcing a man from nature, by thinning out his instincts, and



setting a stamp of its disapproval on whole fields of human activity

and interest, leads at last directly to material greed?



Nature is a good guide through life, and the love of simple pleasures

next, if not superior, to virtue; and we had on board an Irishman who



based his claim to the widest and most affectionate popularity

precisely upon these two qualities, that he was natural and happy.



He boasted a fresh colour, a tight little figure, unquenchable

gaiety, and indefatigable goodwill. His clothes puzzled the



diagnostic mind, until you heard he had been once a private coachman,

when they became eloquent and seemed a part of his biography. His



face contained the rest, and, I fear, a prophecy of the future; the

hawk's nose above accorded so ill with the pink baby's mouth below.



His spirit and his pride belonged, you might say, to the nose; while

it was the general shiftlessness expressed by the other that had



thrown him from situation to situation, and at length on board the

emigrant ship. Barney ate, so to speak, nothing from the galley; his



own tea, butter, and eggs supported him throughout the voyage; and

about mealtime you might often find him up to the elbows in amateur



cookery. His was the first voice heard singing among all the

passengers; he was the first who fell to dancing. From Loch Foyle to



Sandy Hook, there was not a piece of fun undertaken but there was

Barney in the midst.



You ought to have seen him when he stood up to sing at our concerts -

his tight little figure stepping to and fro, and his feet shuffling






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