There were no friends to step in and go Foster's security, and thus save his property from sacrifice.

The father of his wife was dead, and his own friends, even if they had not lost confidence in him, were unable to render any assistance.
The rented farm upon which Foster went with his family, after being sold out, was cultivated with no more industry than his own had been of late years.

The man had lost all ambition, and was yielding himself a slave to the all-degrading appetite for drink.

At first, his wife opposed a gentle remonstrance; but he became impatient and angry at a word, and she shrank back into herself, choosing rather to bear silently the ills of poverty and degradation, which she saw were rapidly approaching, than to run the risk of having unkindness, from one so tenderly loved, added thereto.
Affliction came with trouble.

Death took from the mother's arms, in a single year, three children.