drinking, Mr. Bacon had another habit, that of industry; and, what
was unusual, the former did not abate the latter, though it must be
owned that it sadly interfered with its efficiency. He was up, as we
have said, with the dawn, and all the day he was busy at work; but,
somehow or other, his land did not produce as liberally as in former
times, and there was slowly creeping over every thing around him an
aspect of decay. Moreover, he did not manage, as well as formerly,
the selling part of his business. In fact, his shrewdness of mind
was gone. Alcohol had confused his brain. Gradually he was
retrograding; and, while more than half conscious of the ruin that
was in advance of him, he was not fully enough awake to feel
seriously alarmed, nor to begin anxiously to seek for the cause of
impending evil. And so it went on until Mr. Bacon, suddenly found
himself in the midst of real trouble. The value of his farm, which,
after parting with the twenty acres of meadow land, contained but
twenty-five acres, had been yearly diminishing in consequence of bad
culture, and defective management of his stock had reduced that
until it was of little consequence.

The holder of the mortgage was a man named Dyer, who kept a tavern
in the village that lay a mile distant from the little white
farm-house of Mr. Bacon. When Dyer commenced his liquor-selling
trade, for that was his principal business, he had only a few
hundred dollars; now he was worth thousands, and was about the only
man in the neighbourhood who had money to lend. His loans were
always made on bond and mortgage, and, it was a little remarkable,
that he was never known to let a sober, industrious farmer or
store-keeper have a single dollar. But, a drinking man, who was
gradually wasting his substance, rarely applied to him in vain; for
he was the cunning spider watching for the silly fly. More than one