388 THE MORAL STATUS OF ALCOHOL. 



ill-regulated their exuberant affections ! I might have thought 

 British Jack-tars had filled up the measure of every venial 

 social iniquity, but for the Russian fleet at Plymouth. The 

 Muscovites drank deep of spirits and beer in that nothing 

 remarkable ; but they also drank, night after night, of train- 

 oil from the street lamps : such was their barbarian propensity. 



The lamps went out of course ; again and again the streets 

 were left in darkness. It would have been inhospitable to 

 have made a fuss about it; and the Plymothians are kind. 

 They simply refilled their lamps, making no remonstrance. 

 The Russian fleet sailed away, and, after long years, re- 

 turned. By this time street gas-lamps had taken the place 

 of oil-lamps ; but the dull Muscovites, ignorant of the substi- 

 tution, climbed up the lamp-posts after the ancient, bold, bad 

 way, and immediately began sucking. The result was calami- 

 tous, as somebody told me, who had the recital from another. 

 A sort of intoxication came over the fellows ; their mouths 

 spell-bound, as we may say, each to a batswing burner, they 

 grasped the metal tightly, and still continued sucking. One 

 boatswain a man shrivelled to look at, but whose skin was 

 remarkably loose blew out just like a balloon ; then mount- 

 ing aloft, flew away, and has never been heard of since ! 

 Others took a shorter flight ; fell, and were picked up safely. 

 Others yet hard, tough-skinned, and heavy Russians did 

 not fairly ascend into the air at all, but kept bobbing up and 

 down upon the pavement, just like so many of those light 

 india-rubber bubbles now commonly seen in the hands of 

 London children. 



That the result is remarkable, I think no unprejudiced 

 mind will doubt ; but this also is remarkable, viz. that long 

 before the possibility of evolving alcohol from coal gas was 

 demonstrated, the adumbration, the foreshadowing of that 

 strange chemical triumph, should have been vouchsafed to 

 human eyes through the instinctive proclivity of some rough 

 Muscovite sailors. 



