IMPRESSIONS OF PENZANCE 131 



them, and poor weak humanity is ever credulous of a 

 flattering falsehood. 



One day, a few miles from Penzance, I met a young 

 coastguardsman and had a nice long talk with him, in 

 the course of which he gave me his impression of the 

 country. For he was not a native and had not long 

 been in Cornwall ; he came from South Wales where 

 he had been stationed two or three years. The people 

 of that place I will not mention the locality were, 

 he said, horrible to live with, degraded and brutish 

 beyond what he could have imagined possible in any 

 civilised country. They were drunkards, fighters, 

 dreadfully profane, and as to lechery called immoral- 

 ity in the journals and blue-books no woman could 

 go out after dark, or by day into any lonely place, 

 without danger of assault. The change to West 

 Cornwall was so great that for several weeks he could 

 not realise it ; he could not believe that the people 

 were all sober and decent and friendly in disposition 

 as he had been assured. When he spied a man 

 coming along the road his impulse was to lower his 

 eyes or turn his face away to avoid seeing a brutalised 

 countenance. He always expected to hear some ob- 

 scene expression or a torrent of profanity from every 

 stranger he met. Even now, after some months in 

 this new clean land, he had not grown quite accus- 

 tomed to regard every one, stranger or not, as a being 

 just like himself, one he could freely address and feel 

 sure of receiving friendly pleasant words in return. 



It was interesting to hear the coastguardsman's 

 story because of his feelings in the matter and what 



