Bart came out of school to lounge upon the streets, to smoke immoderately, and to drink such large quantities of what went into the country by the name of "Jamaica," that in a few years it came to pass that he was nearly always drunk.
Poor Bart! the rum habit worked its heavy chains upon him before he was well aware that his life had begun in earnest; and when he realised that he was in possession of his full manhood, and that the prime of life was not far off, he found himself chained hand and foot, toiling heavily in the most degrading servitude.

A few more years and he realised also that, do what he would, he could not set himself free.

No one in the world had any knowledge of the struggle he made.

Some--his mother among them--gave him credit for trying now and then, and that was a charitable view of his case.

How could any man know?
He was not born with the nature that reveals itself in many words, or that gets rid of its intolerable burdens of grief and shame by passing them off upon others.
All that any one could see was the inevitable failure.
The failure was the chief of what Bart himself saw.