From Wealth to Poverty; Or, the Tricks of the Traffic. A Story of the Drink Curse

for years, and who died quite unexpectedly. His mother never recovered from the shock, but in a short time followed her l

st a boy came, with the fair hair and large dreamy eyes of the mother; then, two years later, a girl with

uneasiness of mind, and sometimes when a friend called she had to absen

employees important transactions which should have had his undivided attention; and the course he had pursued had alienated some of his best customers. The Liberal Club of which he was a member was composed of the most ultra of the Radicals in that section of country-in fact a great many of its members had been participants in the Chartist agitation, and, a short t

among those who are called liberals in their religious views. This could not be tolerated for a moment by those among his customers who were decided in their religious convictions, for they were fully convinced that a

th, and was the source of much sorrow.

he abyss of woe, for if we do we may discover there are depths we have not yet fathomed. This Ruth Ashton soon bitterly realized, for her husband had of late frequently returned fr

ed, and his friends one after another left him, and he began to drink more deeply to drown his cares and to stimulate him to meet his difficulties, her partial anxiety deepened into agony, strong and intense. She made loving remonstrance, appealing to him if he loved wife and children to leave the "Club," and not destroy his business and thus involve them all in ruin. Also, frequently, when the children were fast asleep in their little cot, as she looked with

she had not enough confidence in him to believe he was sufficiently master of himself to take a glass with a friend without degenerating into a so

ising what he believed to be his right, not even for her, much as he loved her. He said it was his proud boast that he was a Briton, and as such he would be free-free not only to hold his opinions, but to act

the business, began to be seriously diminished. Josh Billings says, "When a man begins to slide down hill he finds it greased for the occasion." And certainly the case of Richard Ashton illustrated the truth of the aphorism, for when he onc