What I mean is that while he was drifting then into a piggy muddle, he had the sense to take a brace before his lapses became vices.

It is an ungracious task for a son to call attention to anything but the virtues of his father, especially when any lapses were the result of great provocation, and were made under the firm conviction that he was in the right.

She could not convince herself that the lapses of that winter were not part and parcel of her brother's philosophy of life, a coarse and material philosophy.

run to seed, go to seed, run to waste swale^, sweal^; lapse, be the worse for; sphacelate: break^, break down; spring a leak, crack, start; shrivel &c (contract) 195; fade, go off, wither, molder, rot, rankle, decay, go bad; go to decay, fall into decay; fall into the sear and yellow leaf, rust, crumble, shake; totter, totter to its fall; perish &c 162; die &c 360.

Dey don let my taxes lapse am I'se neber widout somting to eat."