almost invariably follow indolence and a want of regular employment. For the last two years, he had been a constant visitant at " Crockford's," the great gambling establishment for private gentlemen ; and as though fate had hovered over this awful crisis in the affairs of the Boardmans, in the midst ofthe father's embarrassments, he was called upon to pay notes amounting to nearly twenty thousand pounds, or follow his son to prison. In hopes of concealment, the notes were paid : but the affair soon got abroad ; the house could not sustain this additional shock to its credit : and in a short time, the old firm of Boardman failed for upwards of six hundred thousand pounds, and with it were crushed the hopes and the fortunes of the Boardmans of " Grove Hall."
This sad reverse was too much for the old merchant. Cut off from the busy scenes of active life ; his family degraded, shattered and ruined ; himself neglected , or passed by with cold recognition, he sought a temporary retreat in an obscure town ; but the wandering ejaculation and the vacant stare denoted too soon that intellect had left vacant the temple of reason ; and, in less than two years afterward, he died, brokenhearted and forlorn, in the retreat for lunatics in the heart of the metropolis. John, the gentleman of leisure, and the private gambler, had, by the last descending step, become a professional gamester ; and perhaps the reader may recollect the " Confessions of a Gambler, " whose painful narrative alluded to the mis-spent time and wasted opportunities of his youth. It was he whose first public crime was forgery, and whose deeds hastened to ruin the father who had yielded him a fatal lenity. Thomas, the other son of indolence, became a wasted, wretched, miserable, and debauched drunkard , and died a cast-off in a parish alms -house. Harry, the " millionaire," exhibited the benefit of having been employed, although he had made some fatal mistakes in business. He ultimately became a navigator, and is now a respectable seacaptain to a foreign port. But Edward, the youngest brother, coming on the theatre of life after the sad reverse of his family, had no factitious aid to help him onward ; but he was determined to procure an education ; and teaching in the intervals between his regular studies , he is now one of the most popular preachers of the time, and has gathered his mother and her daughters to a neat little cottage, where they feel it their duty to teach by the melancholy illustration of their own history, the great error of the present day- seeking to live like other people.
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