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

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT
disclosures of his despair. * The ship may go down
for me,' he would say, * now or to-morrow. I have
nothing to lose and nothing to hope.' And again :
*I am sick of the whole damned performance.' He
was, like the kind little man already quoted, another
so-called victim of the bottle. But Mackay was
miles from publishing his weakness to the world;
laid the blame of his failure on corrupt masters and
a corrupt State policy ; and after he had been one
night overtaken and had played the buffoon in his
cups, sternly, though not without tact, suppressed all
reference to his escapade. It was a treat to see him
manage this ; the various jesters withered under his
gaze, and you were forced to recognise in him a
certain steely force, and a gift of command which
might have ruled a senate.
In truth it was not whisky that had ruined him ;
he was ruined long before for all good human pur-
poses but conversation. His eyes were sealed by
a cheap, school-book materialism. He could see
nothing in the world but money and steam-engines.
He did not know what you meant by the word
happiness. He had forgotten the simple emotions
of childhood, and perhaps never encountered the
delights of youth. He believed in production, that
useful figment of economy, as if it had been real
Hke laughter ; and production, without prejudice to
liquor, was his god and guide. One day he took me
to task — a novel cry to me — upon the over-payment
of literature. Literary men, he said, were more
highly paid than artisans ; yet the artisan made
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