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 celestial
enterprise 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