The crops were a failure that year. Creditors pressed hard; the Captain had no money to pay his workmen, and he would not work himself. Disgusted with his location, but unable to change it for a better; without friends of his own class (for he was the only gentleman then resident in the new township), to relieve the monotony of his existence with their society, or to afford him advice or assistance in his difficulties, the fatal whiskey-bottle became his refuge from gloomy thoughts. His wife, an amiable and devoted creature, well born, well educated, and deserving of a better lot, did all in her power to wean him from the growing vice. But, alas! the pleadings of an angel, in such circumstances, would have had little effect upon the mind of such a man. He loved her as well as he could love any thing, and he fancied that he loved his children, while he was daily reducing them, by his favourite vice, to beggary. For awhile, he confined his excesses to his own fireside, but this was only for as long a period as the sale of his stock and laud would supply him with the means of criminal indulgence. After a time, all these resources failed, and his large grant of eight hundred acres of land had been converted into whiskey, except the one hundred acres on which his house and barn stood, embracing the small clearing from which the family derived their scanty supply of wheat and potatoes. For the sake of peace, his wife gave up all her ornaments and household plate, and the best articles of a once handsome and ample wardrobe, in the hope of hiding her sorrows from the world, and keeping her husband at home. The pride, that had rendered him so obnoxious to his humbler neighbours, yielded at length to the inordinate craving for drink; the man who had held himself so high above his honest and industrious fellow-settlers, could now unblushingly enter their cabins and beg for a drop of whiskey. The feeling of shame once subdued, there was no end to his audacious mendicity. His whole time was spent in wandering about the country, calling upon every new settler, in the hope of being asked to partake of the coveted poison. He was even known to enter by the window of an emigrant's cabin, during the absence of the owner, and remain drinking in the house while a drop of spirits could be found in the cupboard. When driven forth by the angry owner of the hut, he wandered on to the distant town of P----, and lived there in a low tavern, while his wife and children were starving at home. “He is the filthiest beast in the township,” said the aforementioned neighbour to me; “it would be a good thing for his wife and children if his worthless neck were broken in one of hit, drunken sprees.”