130 THE LAND'S END 



not a vicious people ; they compare well enough with 

 most counties, and they are next-door neighbours to 

 the Cornish ; yet the indictable offences in Devon are 

 about double per thousand of the population to those 

 of Cornwall. What is the reason of this ? Why are 

 the Cornish more temperate than others ? 



I am sorry I ever wasted an hour over a book on 

 Cornwall with the idea that it would be helpful to me. 

 The time would have been more profitably spent if I 

 had stood with my hands in my pockets watching a 

 sparrow carry up straws to its nesting-hole under the 

 eaves ; or, better still, if I had talked to a child or an 

 old man in some village street. To read is to imbibe 

 false ideas, and in the end, if you are capable of 

 observing for yourself and care anything about the 

 matter, you are put to the trouble of ridding yourself 

 of them. 



When the Penzance policemen abstainers and reli- 

 gious men themselves gave me a reason for the 

 people's soberness they were telling me what they had 

 been taught, and I accepted it as probably true. 1 too 

 had read that statement and here was a confirmation 

 of it ! It is a great satisfaction, a relief, to have our 

 problems solved for us. Blessings on the man who 

 runs out before us to remove some obstacle from the 

 path ! 



But the relief was not for long : doubts began to 

 assail me. What the good policemen had said was 

 what the Methodists have been saying in their writ- 

 ings these hundred years or longer : they are saying 

 it now, all the time, and believe it because it flatters 



