Their homes present scenes which human nature shudders at, and which it is impossible truly to describe.

There are parents who, working at home, have every opportunity of training up their children "in the way they should go," if they were inclined so to do.

Instead of this, we often find, in the case of the fathers, that they are so lost to every principle of humanity, that as soon as they receive their wages, they leave their homes, and hasten with eager steps to the public house; nor do they re-pass its accursed threshold, till the vice-fattening landlord has received the greater part of the money which should support their half-fed, half-clothed wives and children; and till they have qualified themselves, by intoxication, to act worse than brutes on their return home.

To men of this description it matters not whether or not their children are proving themselves skilful imitators of their evil example,--they may curse and swear, lie and steal,--so long as they can enjoy the society of their pot companions, it is to them a matter of total indifference.
During my superintendence of the first school, I had a painful facility of examining these matters.

Frequently, when I have inquired the cause of the wretched plight in which some of the children were sent to the school,--perhaps with scarcely a shoe to their feet, sometimes altogether without,--I have heard from their mothers the most heart-rending recitals of the husband's misconduct.