g, eating and drinking, whatsoever we do, are more tested by
the real practical standard of our religion than they were in the
days of our grandfathers. Neither Sylvia nor her mother was in
advance of their age. Both listened with admiration to the ingenious
devices, and acted as well as spoken lies, that were talked about as
fine and spirited things. Yet if Sylvia had attempted one tithe of
this deceit in her every-day life, it would have half broken her
mother's heart. But when the duty on salt was strictly and cruelly
enforced, making it penal to pick up rough dirty lumps containing
small quantities that might be thrown out with the ashes of the
brine-houses on the high-roads; when the price of this necessary was
so increased by the tax upon it as to make it an expensive,
sometimes an unattainable, luxury to the working man, Government did
more to demoralise the popular sense of rectitude and uprightness
than heaps of sermons could undo. And the same, though in smaller
measure, was the consequence of many other taxes. It may seem
curious to trace up the popular standard of truth to taxation; but I
do not think the idea would be so very far-fetched.

From smuggling adventures it was easy to pass on to stories of what
had happened to Robson, in his youth a sailor in the Greenland seas,
and to Kinraid, now one of the best harpooners in any whaler that
sailed off the coast.

'There's three things to be afeared on,' said Robson,
authoritatively: 'there's t' ice, that's bad; there's dirty weather,
that's worse; and there's whales theirselves, as is t' worst of all;
leastways, they was i' my days; t' darned brutes may ha' larnt
better manners sin'. When I were young, they could niver be got to
let theirsels be harpooned wi'out flounderin' and makin' play wi'
their tales and their fins, till t' say were all in a foam, and t'
boats' crews was all o'er wi' spray, which i' them latitudes is a
kind o' shower-bath not needed.'

'Th' whales hasn't mended their manners, as you call it,' said
Kinraid; 'but th' ice is not to be spoken lightly on. I were once in
th' ship _John_ of Hull, and we were in good green water, and were
keen after whales; and ne'er thought harm of a great gray iceberg as
were on our lee-bow, a mile or so off; it looked as if it had been
there from the days of Adam, and were likely to see th' last man
out, and it ne'er a bit bigger nor smaller in all them thousands and
thousands o' years. Well, the fast-boa