It is wonderful to reflect how vanity blinds common sense, and turns all the power of reason and judgment to nothing.  Art was so thoroughly infatuated by his own vanity, that he was utterly incapable of seeing through the gross and selfish flattery with which they plied him.  Nay, when praising him, or when sticking him in for drink, as it is termed, they have often laughed in his very face, so conscious were they that it could be done with impunity.

This course of life could not fail to produce suitable consequences to his health, his reputation, and his business.  His customers began to find now that the man whose word had never been doubted, and whose punctuality was proverbial, became so careless and negligent in attending to his orders, that it was quite useless to rely upon his promises, and, as a very natural consequence, they began to drop off one after another, until he found to his cost that a great number of his best and most respectable supporters ceased to employ him.

When his workmen, too, saw that he had got into tippling and irregular habits, and that his eye was not, as in the days of his industry, over them, they naturally became careless and negligent, as did the apprentices also.  Nor was this all; the very individuals who had been formerly remarkable for steadiness, industry, and sobriety—­for Art would then keep no other—­were now, many of them, corrupted by his own example, and addicted to idleness and drink.  This placed him in a very difficult position; for how, we ask, could he remonstrate with them so long as he himself transgressed more flagrantly than they did?  For this reason he was often forced to connive at outbreaks of drunkenness and gross cases of neglect, which no sober man would suffer in those whom he employed.

“Take care of your business, and your business will take care of you,” is a good and a wholesome proverb, that cannot bo too strongly impressed on the minds of the working classes.  Art began to feel surprised that his business was declining, but as yet his good sense was strong enough to point out to him the cause of it.  His mind now became disturbed, for while he felt conscious that his own neglect and habits of dissipation occasioned it, he also felt that he was but a child in the strong grasp of his own propensities.  This was anything but a consoling reflection, and so long as it lasted he was gloomy, morbid, and peevish; his excellent wife was the first to remark this, and, indeed, was the first that had occasion to remark it, for even in this stage of his life, the man who had never spoken to her, or turned his eye upon her, but with tenderness and affection, now began, especially when influenced by drink, to give manifestations of temper that grieved her to the heart.  Abroad, however, he was the same good-humored fellow as ever, with a few rare exceptions—­when he got quarrelsome and fought with his companions.  His workmen all were perfectly aware of his accessibility