IMPRESSIONS OF PENZANCE 125 



was a new and curious experience to find myself in a 

 considerable gathering of rustics who had succeeded 

 in getting through their day away from home so 

 pleasantly without the aid of intoxicants. 



Some of the town police I conversed with on the 

 subject during the day assured me there was very 

 little drinking going on ; and that on the last occasion 

 of the great annual fair of Corpus Christi, which lasts 

 two or three days, when the people of all the country 

 round are gathered in Penzance and a good deal of 

 merry-making goes on, they had not a single case of 

 drunkenness. The policemen, abstainers themselves 

 they informed me, believed the people were sober 

 because they were mostly church and chapel goers 

 and had been brought up to regard intemperance as 

 a great defect in a man and a great sin. 



This explanation of the soberness of the Cornish 

 people, especially in the west part, is, I found, the 

 usual one : it is short and easy to carry about in the 

 brain, and a policeman or any one you question on 

 the point is as ready to supply you with it as he 

 would be to give you a match to light your pipe. 

 Religion may be one cause, but I imagine that another 

 and a much more important one is to be traced in the 

 character of this people. 



I here recall a striking explanation of the drinking 

 habit in England given me by an independent witness 

 and a very keen observer. He was an Argentine of 

 an old native family. I first knew him as a young 

 student ; he rose afterwards to a very high place in 

 the government of his country, and a few years ago, 



