Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 3, 1895 - Travels and Excursions, Volume II

STEERAGE TYPES
company. I was one day conversing with a kind
and happy Scotsman, rmming to fat and perspiration
in the physical, but with a taste for poetry and a
genial sense of fun. I had asked him his hopes in
emigrating. They were like those of so many others,
vague and unfounded : times were bad at home ;
they were said to have a turn for the better in the
States ; and a man could get on anywhere, he
thought. That was precisely the weak point of his
position ; for if he could get on in America, why
could he not do the same in Scotland ? But I never
had the courage to use that argument, though it was
often on the tip of my tongue, and instead I agreed
with him heartily, adding, with reckless originality,
* If the man stuck to his work, and kept away from
drink.'
' Ah ! ' said he slowly, ' the drink ! You see, that 's
just my trouble.'
He spoke with a simplicity that was touching,
looking at me at the same time with something
strange and timid in his eye, half-ashamed, half- sorry,
like a good child who knows he should be beaten.
You would have said he recognised a destiny to
which he was born, and accepted the consequences
mildly. Like the merchant Abudah, he was at the
same time fleeing from his destiny and carrying it
along with him, the whole at an expense of six
guineas.
As far as I saw, drink, idleness, and incompetency
were the three great causes of emigration, and for
all of them, and drink first and foremost, this trick
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