IMPRESSIONS OF PENZANCE 127 



it. To take alcohol is unnecessary, and would, in- 

 deed, be very foolish. 



So far my Argentine friend, and whether he was 

 right or wrong it struck me at Penzance that the 

 naturally lively disposition of Cornishmen, their 

 quick feeling and responsiveness, was the chief cause 

 of their temperance in drink. This made it easy for 

 them to practise temperance ; it made it possible for 

 friend to meet friend and spend the day without an 

 artificial aid to cheerfulness. 



It is true that the Irish, racially related to the 

 Cornish and resembling them in disposition, are not 

 a sober people ; on this point I will only venture to 

 suggest that their love of whisky and ether may 

 not result from the same cause as the Anglo-Saxon's 

 love of drink. Probably their misery has got a great 

 deal to do with it, for just as whisky or beer will 

 unfreeze the currents of the soul in two stolid English 

 friends and set them flowing merrily, so in men of all 

 races will alcohol lift them above themselves and give 

 them a brief happiness. 



It may seem odd to quote the Rev. R. J. Campbell 

 in this connection, but I find in a recent pronounce- 

 ment of his a curiously apposite remark about 

 drunkenness. " The man," he says, " who got dead 

 drunk last night did so because of the inspiration in 

 him to break through the barriers of his limitations, 

 to express himself and realize the more abundant 

 life." We need not follow him any further in his 

 quaint contention that sin is, after all, nothing but a 

 spasmodic effort of the sinner to reach to or capture 



