It was a long time before he lifted himself up from his sorrow, and then the will of the man seemed to have been breached through his affections.

He let the girls do as they pleased--the twins had been girls; he let them go away to school, and got them a piano.

It was they who made him sell the farm.

If Conrad had only had their spirit he could have made him keep it, he felt; and he resented the want of support he might have found in a less yielding spirit than his son's.
His moral decay began with his perception of the opportunity of making money quickly and abundantly, which offered itself to him after he sold his farm.

He awoke to it slowly, from a desolation in which he tasted the last bitter of homesickness, the utter misery of idleness and listlessness.