There was hard drinking, horse-racing, and card-playing, and waste of substance generally.
But it was not for long, for several reasons.

In the first place, the lad of forty years, suddenly broken forth as it were from school, had gone past the age when youth plunges beyond recall.

He was a grown man, neither wise nor clever; but with a man's sedateness of spirit and a man's hopes.
There was no innate evil in his nature to lead him into unrighteous courses.

Perhaps his fault rather lay in his inoffensive disposition--he submitted too easily.

Then, in the second place, there was not much money, and what there was had to meet many calls.
The son found that the father, though reputed a substantial man, and a man among farmers of high esteem and good family, had been anything but rich.
First there were secret debts that had run on for fully thirty years--sums of from fifty to one hundred pounds--borrowed in the days of his youth, when he, too, had at last been released in a similar manner from similar bondage, to meet the riotous living in which he also had indulged.