Thinking a few nice grapes would be acceptable, I went out and obtained some, and came back to him. As I sat giving him a few, I heard the father and mother come in, and go tumbling upstairs. After a short time I went up to them, and, being invited, entered their den, for no other word can fitly describe it. I have been in many wretched places, but have seen nothing worse than their ‘home.’ The furniture consisted of three chairs--each bottomless--and a miserable table, on which were some stale bread and a dirty piece of cheese that the child of five (she had no shoes or stockings on) was pecking at with a fork. In the corner stood a small iron bedstead, covered with a quilt made up of portions of old clothing stitched indiscriminately together. No fire was alight, but the accumulated ashes of many days choked the hearth. The atmosphere was insufferable; the father drunk, the mother drunk, a female who had come in with them drunk also; and the poor lad lay dying below--all this made up such a scene of grotesque horror as fairly made me gasp. It was some time before I could speak to them, and when I did it was in no measured terms, telling them that they were a scandal to humanity. Afterwards, when I spoke to them of their duty and responsibility to their son, they began to cry and wring their hands, repeating again and again: ‘Drink is damnation! Drink is damnation!’ while the wretched woman they had brought in joined her maudlin tears with theirs, and repeatedly wished that her husband would give up drink. Day by day I visited the youth for five days before I found the parents sober, and then I brought them, sober and miserable, to the bedside of the dying boy, and there they swore before God to touch no more drink while he lived, promising also to make his last days peaceful.