3 io RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



ready to amend their ways if only one will pass the 

 sponge over some incident in their career. Upon one 

 occasion, a whole troop of convicts who had escaped 

 from some prison on the shores of the Adriatic 

 swooped down upon the Isthmus as upon a land of 

 promise. The Austrian consul demanded their sur- 

 render, but you spun out the negotiations, and in a 

 few weeks' time the consul was busily employed in 

 forwarding the money which these worthy fellows 

 wanted to send home to their poor relations, perhaps 

 to their victims. The consul thereupon begged you 

 to keep them, as you had succeeded in turning them 

 to such excellent account. In a report of one of your 

 lectures, I remember reading : ' M. de Lesseps stated 

 that men were trustworthy and not at all evilly dis- 

 posed when they have enough to live upon. Man 

 only becomes evil through hunger or fear.' We 

 should perhaps add : or when he is jealous.' You 

 went on to say : i I have never had to complain of 

 my workmen, and yet I have employed pirates and 

 convicts. Work has made honest men again of them 

 all ; I have never been robbed even of a pockethand- 

 kerchief. The truth is that our men can be got to do 

 anything by showing them esteem and by persuading 

 them that they are engaged upon a work of world- 

 wide interest.' 



" You have thus caused to blossom once more a flower 

 which seemed faded for ever. You have given in this 

 sceptical age of ours, a striking proof of the efficacy 



