The next day was one of heart-aching reflections to Theodore Wilmer.  In his eager, but half-insane effort to elevate himself rapidly for the sake of his young wife, he had sunk into actual want, and not only forfeited his own self-respect, but degraded himself, he felt, in the eyes of her whose love was dearer to him than life.

The events of two years must now be passed over, with but a brief notice.  There will be enough in the after history of Wilmer and his young wife, to awaken the reader’s keenest sympathies, without unveiling the particular incidents of this period.

Suffice it, then, to say,—­that the first night’s experience at the gambling-table was not enough to satisfy Wilmer, that it was neither the right way, nor the most successful way of elevating himself in the world.  So anxious did he feel on account of Constance, that be borrowed money of his false friend Arnold, on the evening of the very next day, and after drinking, freely, to nerve himself up, sought again the gambling-table.  At ten o’clock, he left, the winner by fifty dollars.  He left thus early on account of his wife, who would be, he knew, anxiously looking for his return.  This encouraged him to go on, and he did go on.  But he could never feel sanguine of success, or be able to still the troubled whispers within, until he had drunken freely.  Of course, he was every day more or less under the influence of liquor.  For a year, he managed, in this way, to keep up the style of living in which he had commenced, but he could get nothing ahead.  None could imagine how this was done, for the young man was exceedingly cautious.  He looked to some good turn of fortune by which he should be enabled to abandon for ever a course of life that he hated and despised.  No such lucky turn, however, met his anxious expectations.  After the first year of this course of life, his health, which had never been very good, began rapidly to fail.  His cheeks became hollow, and a racking cough began to show itself.  Still he went on keeping late hours, and drinking more and more freely, while his mind was all the time upon the rack.  Towards the close of the second year, he was taken down with a severe illness, the result of all this abuse of mind and body.  He lingered long upon the brink of the grave; but the little energy which his system retained, rallied at last, and he began slowly to recover.  During convalescence, he had full time for reflection.  For full two years, he had been almost constantly so much under the influence of brandy, as really to be unable to think rationally upon any subject, and he had, in consequence, pursued a course of life, injurious, both to his own moral and physical health, and to the happiness of her for whom he would, at any moment of that time, have sacrificed everything, even life itself.  In rising from that bed of sickness, it was with a solemn vow never again to enter a gaming-house, and never again to touch the bewildering poison that had been the secondary, if not, indeed, the primary cause of two years’ folly—­nay, madness.