It was at this disastrous period that
Jenny entered his service. Had her master adapted his habits and
expenditure to his altered circumstances, much misery might have
been spared, both to himself and his family. But he was a proud
man - too proud to work, or to receive with kindness the offers of
service tendered to him by his half-civilised, but well-meaning
neighbours.
"Hang him!" cried an indignant English settler (Captain N - - was
an Irishman), whose offer of drawing wood had been rejected with
unmerited contempt. "Wait a few years, and we shall see what his
pride will do for him. I AM sorry for his poor wife and children;
but for himself, I have no pity for him."
This man had been uselessly insulted, at the very moment when he was
anxious to perform a kind and benevolent action; when, like a true
Englishman, his heart was softened by witnessing the sufferings of a
young, delicate female and her infant family. Deeply affronted by
the captain's foolish conduct, he now took a malignant pleasure in
watching his arrogant neighbour's progress to ruin.
The year after the sale of his commission, Captain N - - found
himself considerably in debt, "Never mind, Ella," he said to his
anxious wife; "the crops will pay all."
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 in 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 anything, 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 land
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.
