To return to our hero, the state of the law, as above sketched,
naturally confuses him, and the villain, who is the only human being
who does seem to understand stage legal questions, is easily able to
fleece and ruin him. The simple-minded hero signs mortgages, bills of
sale, deeds of gift, and such like things, under the impression that
he is playing some sort of a round game; and then when he cannot pay
the interest they take his wife and children away from him and turn
him adrift into the world.

Being thrown upon his own resources, he naturally starves.

He can make long speeches, he can tell you all his troubles, he can
stand in the lime-light and strike attitudes, he can knock the villain
down, and he can defy the police, but these requirements are not much
in demand in the labor market, and as they are all he can do or cares
to do, he finds earning his living a much more difficult affair than
he fancied.

There is a deal too much hard work about it for him. He soon gives up
trying it at all, and prefers to eke out an uncertain existence by
sponging upon good-natured old Irish women and generous but
weak-minded young artisans who have left their native village to
follow him and enjoy the advantage of his company and conversation.

And so he drags out his life during the middle of the piece, raving at
fortune, raging at humanity, and whining about his miseries until the
last act.

Then he gets back those "estates" of his into his possession once