'
'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.
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