The lingering influences of
a conscience that generally felt strongly on the side of a moral duty,
though poorly instructed, prompted him to drink it in the usual manner,
by keeping one-half of his body, as, nearly as he could guess, out of
the window, that it might be said he drank it neither in nor out of the
house. He had scarcely finished his draught, however, when he lost his
balance, and was precipitated upon the pavement. The crash of his fall
was heard in the bar, and his son, who had just come in, ran, along with
several others, to ascertain what had happened. They found him, however,
only severely stunned. He was immediately brought in, and medical aid
sent for; but, though he recovered from the immediate effects of the
fall, the shock it gave to his broken constitution, and his excessive
grief, carried him off in a few months afterwards. He expired in the
arms of his son and daughter, and amidst the tears of those who knew his
simplicity of character, his goodness of heart, and his attachment to
the wife by whose death that heart had been broken.
Such was the melancholy end of the honest and warm-hearted Peter
Connell, who, unhappily, was not a solitary instance of a man driven to
habits of intoxication and neglect of business by the force of sorrow,
which time and a well-regulated mind might otherwise have overcome.
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