He still contrived to stimulate sufficiently to prevent the return of a
calm and healthy state of the mind and body, and to make constant
self-control and watchfulness necessary.

It is a great mistake to call nothing intemperance but that degree of
physical excitement which completely overthrows the mental powers. There
is a state of nervous excitability, resulting from what is often called
moderate stimulation, which often long precedes this, and is, in regard
to it, like the premonitory warnings of the fatal cholera--an
unsuspected draught on the vital powers, from which, at any moment, they
may sink into irremediable collapse.

It is in this state, often, that the spirit of gambling or of wild
speculation is induced by the morbid cravings of an over-stimulated
system. Unsatisfied with the healthy and regular routine of business,
and the laws of gradual and solid prosperity, the excited and unsteady
imagination leads its subjects to daring risks, with the alternative of
unbounded gain on the one side, or of utter ruin on the other. And when,
as is too often the case, that ruin comes, unrestrained and desperate
intemperance is the wretched resort to allay the ravings of
disappointment and despair.

Such was the case with Edward. He had lost his interest in his regular
business, and he embarked the bulk of his property in a brilliant scheme
then in vogue; and when he found a crisis coming, threatening ruin and
beggary, he had recourse to the fatal stimulus, which, alas! he had
never wholly abandoned.

At this time he spent some months in a distant city, separated from his
wife and family, while the insidious power of temptation daily
increased, as he kept up, by artificial stimulus, the flagging vigor of
his mind and nervous system.

It came at last--the blow which shattered alike his brilliant dreams and
his real prosperity. The large fortune brought by his wife vanished in a
moment, so that scarcely a pittance remained in his hands. From the
distant city where he had been to superintend his schemes, he thus wrote
to his too confiding wife:--

"Augusta, all is over! expect no more from your husband--believe no more
of his promises--for he is lost to you and you to him. Augusta, our
property is gone; _your_ property, which I have blindly risked, is all
swallowed up. But is that the worst? No, no, Augusta; _I_ am lost--lost,
body and soul, and as irretrievably as the perishing riches I have
squandered. Once I h