Explore "Make or Break" by Oliver Optic on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
While everything appeared to be well with the banker, into whose exchequer the revenues of the block of stores flowed with unintermitting regularity, the affairs of the other branch of the Osborne family were in a far less hopeful condition. John Wittleworth drank to excess, and did not attend to his business. It was said that he gambled largely; but it was not necessary to add this vice to the other in order to rob him of his property, and filch from him his good name.
He failed in business, and was unable to reestablish himself. He obtained a situation as a clerk, but his intemperate habits unfitted him for his duties. If he could not take care of his own affairs, much less could he manage the affairs of another. He had become a confirmed sot, had sacrificed everything, and given himself up to the demon of the cup. He became a ragged, filthy drunkard; and as such, friends who had formerly honored him refused to recognize him, or to permit him to enter their counting-rooms. Just before the opening of our story, he had been arrested as a common drunkard; and it was even a relief to his poor wife to know that he was safely lodged in the House of Correction.