Peace’s misgivings with regard to Bessie Dalton were not without foundation. To say the truth, she had become duly impressed with the fact that he was intensely selfish.
A number of circumstances conspired to convince her of this, and what liking she had for him at one time was now very considerably diminished.
Bessie was quick-witted, clever in many ways, and was withal kindly disposed. Certainly at this time, at all events, she could not be considered cold or heartless.
But there were other and more cogent reasons for her failing to communicate with Peace. These will be made manifest in the course of this chapter.
Bristow went from bad to worse. His desire for drink became insatiable—indeed, it might with truth be designated a disease. Unhappily for himself and those belonging to him, it appeared to be a disease that was incurable.
For days together this miserably-besotted wretch would be in a state of intoxication.
He had several associates who were nearly as bad as himself. The consequences attendant upon the fatal propensity may easily be guessed. His work was neglected. By degrees his apartments were stripped of everything he could turn into money, and his unhappy wife led a life in comparison to which that of a galley slave was an enviable state of existence.
It is not, it cannot be possible for a writer to depict with anything like adequate force all the misery to be witnessed in the home of a drunkard. Mr. J. B. Gough, the temperance orator, has said that there was no power on earth that tended so much to the degradation and ruin of young men, morally, physically, spiritually, religiously, and he might say financially, as drink. “I have held the hands of dying men in mine,” says the orator; “I have laid my hand upon the burning foreheads, and moistened the dry lips of many drunkards, while I have heard such stories as have made my heart ache and my eyes stream with tears. They were wrecks of men of genius—men of education—men of power—men that might have made their mark in the world, going out—oh, so fearfully—into the blackness, and darkness and hopelessness, of the awful future.”
The great poetical genius of America—Edgar Allan Poe—gasped out a life the world could ill spare in the agonies of a drunken debauch. Robert Greene, worn out with debauchery and completely shattered with diseases which were a consequence of his ill-guided indulgences, was carried off, it is said, by a surfeit of red herrings. There is no sadder book in literature than his dying homily, “A groat’s worth of wit bought with a million of repentance.” Poor Lee, the author of the “Rival Queens,” died like a dog. He had, it has been said, carousing with a party of friends, none of whom had the grace to see him home.
In the morning he was found dead in the streets, which were covered with snow.