He stood erect and hopeful to-day, and to-morrow lay prone and despairing under the heel of his enemy.
At the end of his second term in Congress the people of his district rejected him.

They could tolerate a certain degree of drunkenness and demoralization in their representative, but Ridley had fallen too low.
They would have him no longer, and so he was left out in the party nomination and sent back into private life hurt, humiliated and in debt.

No clients awaited his return.

His law-office had been closed for years, and there was little encouragement to open it again in the old place.

For some weeks after his failure to get the nomination Ridley drank more desperately than ever, and was in a state of intoxication nearly all the while.