For more than a week he kept himself so stupefied with brandy, that neither friends nor creditors could get from him any intelligible statement in regard to his affairs.

In the wish of the latter for an assignment, he passively acquiesced, and permitted all his effects to be taken from his hands.

And so he was thrown upon the world, with his family, helpless, penniless, crushed in spirit, and weak as a child in the strong grasp of an over-mastering appetite, which had long been gathering strength for his day of weakness.
Over the sad history of the succeeding five years let us draw a veil.
We have no heart to picture its suffering, its desolation, its hopelessness.

If, in the beginning, there was too much pride in the heart of Mrs.Ellis, all was crushed out under the iron heel of grim adversity.

If she had once thought too much of herself, and too little of her husband, a great change succeeded; for she clung to him in all the cruel and disgusting forms his abandonment assumed, and, with a self-sacrificing devotion, struggled with the fearful odds against her to retain for her husband and children some little warmth in the humble home where they were hidden from the world in which they once moved.
From the drunkard, angels withdraw themselves, and evil spirits come into nearer companionship; hence, the bestiality and cruelty of drunkenness.