drunk.

Poor Bart! the rum habit worked its heavy chains upon him before he was
well aware that his life had begun in earnest; and when he realised that
he was in possession of his full manhood, and that the prime of life was
not far off, he found himself chained hand and foot, toiling heavily in
the most degrading servitude. A few more years and he realised also
that, do what he would, he could not set himself free. No one in the
world had any knowledge of the struggle he made. Some--his mother among
them--gave him credit for trying now and then, and that was a charitable
view of his case. How could any man know? He was not born with the
nature that reveals itself in many words, or that gets rid of its
intolerable burdens of grief and shame by passing them off upon others.
All that any one could see was the inevitable failure.

The failure was the chief of what Bart himself saw. That unquenchable
instinct in a man's heart that if he had only tried a little harder he
would certainly have attained to righteousness gave the lie to his sense
of agonising struggle, with its desperate, rallies of courage and
sinkings of discouragement, gleams of self-confidence, and foul
suspicion of self, suspicion even as to the reality of his own effort.
All this was in the region of unseen spirit, almost as much unseen to
those about him as are the spirits of the dead men and angels, often a
mere matter of faith to himself, so apart did it seem from the outward
realities of life.

Outwardly the years went easily enough. The father railed and stormed,
then relapsed into a manner of silent contempt; but he did not drive his
son from the plain, comfortable home which he kept. Bart would not work,
but he took some interest in reading. Paper-covered infidel books, and
popular books on modern science, were his choice rather than fiction.
The choice might have been worse, for the fiction to which he had access
was more enervating. Outside his father's house he neglected the better
class of his neighbours, and fraternised with the men and women that
lived by the lowest bank of the river; but his life there was still one
into which the fresh air and the sunshine of the Canadian climate
entered largely. If he lounged all day, it was on the benches in the
open air; if he played cards all night, he was not given much money to
waste; and there were few women to lend their companionship to the many
drunkards of whom he was only one. Then, also, Bar