the quantities he could take would seem fabulous to an ordinary
drinking man. He never let it interfere with his work, he
generally drank at night and on Sundays. Every night, as soon as
his chores were done, he began to drink. While he was able to sit
up he would play on his mouth harp or hack away at his window sills
with his jackknife. When the liquor went to his head he would lie
down on his bed and stare out of the window until he went to sleep.
He drank alone and in solitude not for pleasure or good cheer, but
to forget the awful loneliness and level of the Divide. Milton
made a sad blunder when he put mountains in hell. Mountains
postulate faith and aspiration. All mountain peoples are
religious. It was the cities of the plains that, because of their
utter lack of spirituality and the mad caprice of their vice, were
cursed of God.

Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man.
Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes
maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar. Canute was
none of these, but he was morose and gloomy, and liquor took him
through all the hells of Dante. As he lay on his giant's bed all
the horrors of this world and every other were laid bare to his
chilled senses. He was a man who knew no joy, a man who toiled in
silence and bitterness. The skull and the serpent were always
before him, the symbols of eternal futileness and of eternal hate.

When the first Norwegians near enough to be called neighbors
came, Canute rejoiced, and planned to escape from his bosom vice.
But he was not a social man by nature and had not the power of
drawing out the social side of other people. His new neighbors
rather feared him because of his great strength and size, his