. Long after midnight, upon such and many
other occasions, would he and his companions sit laughing and jesting
and drinking, some saying witty things, and all of them foolish things
and worse; inventing stories apropos of the foibles of friends, and
relating anecdotes which grew more and more irreverent to God and women
as the night advanced, and the wine gained power, and the shame-faced
angels of their true selves, made in the image of God, withdrew into
the dark; until at last, between night and morning, Tom would reel
gracefully home, using all the power of his will--the best use to which
it ever was put--to subdue the drunkenness of which, even in its
embrace, he had the lingering honor to be ashamed, that he might face
his wife with the appearance of the gentleman he was anxious she should
continue to consider him.

It was an unhappy thing for Tom that his mother, having persuaded her
dying husband, "for Tom's sake," to leave the money in her power,
should not now have carried her tyranny further, and refused him money
altogether. He would then have been compelled to work harder, and to
use what he made in procuring the necessaries of life. There might have
been some hope for him then. As it was, his profession was the mere
grasping after the honor of a workman without the doing of the work;
while the little he gained by it was, at the same time, more than
enough to foster the self-deception that he did something in the world.
With the money he gave her, which was never more than a part of what
his mother sent him, Letty had much ado to make both ends meet; and,
while he ran in debt to his tailor and bootmaker, she never had
anything new to wear. She did sometimes wish he would take her out with
him a little oftener of an evening; for sometimes she felt so lonely as
to be quite unable to amuse herself: her resources were not many in her
position, and fewer still in herself; but she always reflected that he
could not afford it, and it was long ere she began to have any doubt or
uneasiness about him--long before she began even to imagine it might be
well if he spent his evenings with her, or, at least, in other ways and
other company than he did. When first such a thought presented itself,
she banished it as a disgrace to herself and an insult to him. But it
was no wonder if she found marriage dull, poor child!--after such
expectations, too, from her Tom!

What a pity it seems to our purblind eyes that so many gir