When I was a youth I used to take all kinds of pledges,
and do my best to keep them, but I never could, because
I didn’t strike at the root of the habit—the
desire; I generally broke down within the month.
Once I tried limiting a habit. That worked
tolerably well for a while. I pledged myself
to smoke but one cigar a day. I kept the cigar
waiting until bedtime, then I had a luxurious time
with it. But desire persecuted me every day
and all day long; so, within the week I found myself
hunting for larger cigars than I had been used to
smoke; then larger ones still, and still larger ones.
Within the fortnight I was getting cigars made for
me—on a yet larger pattern. They still
grew and grew in size. Within the month my cigar
had grown to such proportions that I could have used
it as a crutch. It now seemed to me that a one-cigar
limit was no real protection to a person, so I knocked
my pledge on the head and resumed my liberty.
To go back to that young Canadian. He was a
“remittance man,” the first one I had
ever seen or heard of. Passengers explained the
term to me. They said that dissipated ne’er-do-wells
belonging to important families in England and Canada
were not cast off by their people while there was
any hope of reforming them, but when that last hope
perished at last, the ne’er-do-well was sent
abroad to get him out of the way. He was shipped
off with just enough money in his pocket—no,
in the purser’s pocket—for the needs
of the voyage—and when he reached his destined
port he would find a remittance awaiting him there.
Not a large one, but just enough to keep him a month.
A similar remittance would come monthly thereafter.
It was the remittance-man’s custom to pay his
month’s board and lodging straightway—a
duty which his landlord did not allow him to forget—then
spree away the rest of his money in a single night,
then brood and mope and grieve in idleness till the
next remittance came. It is a pathetic life.
We had other remittance-men on board, it was said.
At least they said they were R. M.’s.
There were two. But they did not resemble the
Canadian; they lacked his tidiness, and his brains,
and his gentlemanly ways, and his resolute spirit,
and his humanities and generosities. One of
them was a lad of nineteen or twenty, and he was a
good deal of a ruin, as to clothes, and morals, and
general aspect. He said he was a scion of a
ducal house in England, and had been shipped to Canada
for the house’s relief, that he had fallen into
trouble there, and was now being shipped to Australia.
He said he had no title. Beyond this remark
he was economical of the truth. The first thing
he did in Australia was to get into the lockup, and
the next thing he did was to proclaim himself an earl
in the police court in the morning and fail to prove
it.
CHAPTER II.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
—Pudd’nhead
Wilson’s New Calendar.
Copyrights
Following the Equator from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
