-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; and 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 reckless originality, "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 i