"'I have no other chance; my prospects are limited to that one place; deprive me of that, and I never more should be able to bring you a mouthful of bread.'
"Day after day,—day after day, the same result followed, and I was as far from success as ever I was, and ever should be; I was yet a beggar.
"The time flew by; my little girl was nearly four years old, but she knew not the misery her father and mother had to endure. The poor little thing sometimes went without more than a meal a day; and while I was living thus upon the town, upon the chances of the gaming-table, many a pang did she cause me, and so did her mother. My constant consolation was this,—
"'It is bad luck now,' I would say; 'but will be better by-and-bye; things cannot always continue thus. It is all for them—all for them.'
"I thought that by continuing constantly in one course, I must be at land at the ebb of the tide. 'It cannot always flow one way,' I thought. I had often heard people say that if you could but have the resolution to play on, you must in the end seize the turn of fortune.
"'If I could but once do that, I would never enter a hell again as long as I drew breath.'
"This was a resolve I could not only make but keep, because I had suffered so much that I would never run through the same misery again that I had already gone through. However, fortune never seemed inclined to take the turn I had hoped for; fortune was as far off as ever, and had in no case given me any opportunity of recovering myself.
"A few pounds were the utmost I could at any time muster, and I had to keep up something of an appearance, and seem as if I had a thousand a year; when, God knows, I could not have mustered a thousandth part of that sum, were all done and paid for.
"Day after day passed on, and yet no change. I had almost given myself up to despair, when one night when I went home I saw my wife was more than usually melancholy and sad, and perhaps ill; I didn't look at her—I seldom did, because her looks were always a reproach to me; I could not help feeling them so.
"'Well,' said I, 'I have come home to you because I have something to bring you; not what I ought—but what I can—you must be satisfied!'—'I am,' she said.