From Wealth to Poverty | Page 5

therefore withdrew their patronage, which
completed the ruin of his formerly prosperous business, for it did not
afterwards pay running expenses.
This state of things greatly alarmed Ruth, and was the source of much
sorrow. But there were greater sorrows to follow.
When we are struggling with difficulties and environed by
circumstances which have a tendency to make us miserable, we must
not imagine that we have sounded the deepest depths of the abyss of
woe, for if we do we may discover there are depths we have not yet
fathomed. This Ruth Ashton soon bitterly realized, for her husband had
of late frequently returned from the Club so much under the influence
of liquor as to be thick in his speech and wild, extravagant and foolish
in his actions, which caused her many hours of unutterable anguish.
When he first began to drink she was not seriously alarmed, it being the
custom in England, at their convivial parties, to pledge each other in
wine; and since on such occasions it frequently happened that they
imbibed, enough, not only to make them a little exuberant but also
quite intoxicated, she thought she must not expect her husband to be
different from other men in this respect, as it was at most only a venial
offence. But now when his troubles thickened, and his friends one after
another left him, and he began to drink more deeply to drown his cares
and to stimulate him to meet his difficulties, her partial anxiety
deepened into agony, strong and intense. She made loving
remonstrance, appealing to him if he loved wife and children to leave
the "Club," and not destroy his business and thus involve them all in

ruin. Also, frequently, when the children were fast asleep in their little
cot, as she looked with a mother's tenderness and pride upon them,
thinking what a picture of innocence and beauty they presented as their
heads nestled lovingly together on the pillow--the raven-black and gold
mingling in beautiful confusion--she would kneel beside them, and as
the deepest, holiest feelings of her heart were stirred, she would pray
that the one who was so dear to them all might be redeemed from evil
and become again a loving husband, a kind father, and a child of God.
Richard at first received her gentle remonstrance with good-natured
banter, and generally turned it off with a playful witticism. He asked
her if she had not enough confidence in him to believe he was
sufficiently master of himself to take a glass with a friend without
degenerating into a sot, and he used very strong expletives when
speaking of those who were so weak as not to be able to take a glass
without making fools of themselves.
But he would not allow even Ruth to influence him in regard to his
political predilections, for, when she tried to persuade him to take a
more moderate course, he sternly replied he would not desist from
exercising what he believed to be his right, not even for her, much as he
loved her. He said it was his proud boast that he was a Briton, and as
such he would be free--free not only to hold his opinions, but to act
upon his convictions, and any man who would withdraw his support
from him because he would not be a slave was a petty tyrant, and if
such an one was not a Nero it was because he lacked the power, not the
spirit.
So matters went from bad to worse with Richard Ashton, not only in
regard to the moral, but, also, in the financial aspect of the case. In fact
he had soon to draw so largely on his banker that the money his father
had left him, outside of the business, began to be seriously diminished.
Josh Billings says, "When a man begins to slide down hill he finds it
greased for the occasion." And certainly the case of Richard Ashton
illustrated the truth of the aphorism, for when he once began to go
down hill his descent was so rapid that he soon reached the bottom; and
became bankrupt in capital and character. He now began to talk of

selling out and going to America: "There," he said, with much
emphasis, "I shall be free."
CHAPTER IV.
SAILS FOR AMERICA, AND MEETS A KINDLY WELCOME.
Ruth was now suffering keenly. She loved her husband with such an
intense passion that even his folly did not cool its ardor, and when
others denounced him in the harshest terms she spoke only in
tenderness. And when many of her friends went so far as to advise her
to leave him, and so save to herself and children some remnant of her
fortune, she indignantly protested against their giving her