The friendly visitor, five years after the first applica tion, and three years after any distinctly unfavorable record, reported that the family was doing well, and that Mr. Bonner had remained sober for nine months.
Jones, John and Margaret. John is an able-bodied man of thirty, a printer by trade, and a successful operator on a machine, although not a rapid hand compositor. He had been for ten years in one office, but had left it to -better himself, as he supposed, in another city. Not being successful, he had returned, and was out of employment. There were four small children, whom the parents de sired to have committed to an institution. The magis trate, to whom application had been made, refused to commit them, on the ground of non-residence. After many conflicting reports and unsuccessful attempts to start the family on a basis of self-support, it was finally ascertained that the difficulty lay with Mrs. Jones. Both man and wife drank, but the wife was the more intem perate. Her rooms were found frequently to be dirty, and the children to be utterly neglected, although at times there would be an improvement, and the children attended a private school irregularly. The family was frequently dispossessed for drunkenness and fighting, and the parents were known to have used vile language before the children.
The man's mother confided to the visitor that the couple were intoxicated when married, although she did not know this until later. The wife had been reared a Cath olic, but the husband was of a Protestant family, and it was difficult to ascertain whether the children had been christened at all, and if so, in what faith. The man con stantly borrowed small sums of money in various direc tions and rarely repaid. His mother supplied him with the money necessary for his union fees when he secured employment.
After a little more than two years of persistent effort to reform the parents and to secure fair treatment of the children, the attempt was given up as a failure, and, at a time when the family had been dispossessed and the fur niture thrown upon the street, the children were com mitted to an asylum, and the father placed under an order of court to pay for their maintenance. The family had
again, in the meantime, become residents of the city.
We have not yet done with our examples of intemper ance. Those that follow illustrate in addition the absence of moral qualities, aside from intemperance, and also illus trate the opportunities which arise for remedial measures in these cases. There are some who are peculiarly gifted for the moral reformation of the intemperate and the vicious, and to all who have this gift one must bid a "God speed " in their efforts. Material relief in such cases as are here described, however, when unaccompanied by dis cipline, or by extraordinary personal influence, seldom achieves a result in which the donor can take satisfaction.
Byrnes, Sarah and Theophrastus. Through a period of ten years a charitable society attempted to rehabilitate the family of Theophrastus and Sarah Byrnes. This man was a physician, a graduate of a well-known medical col lege, and had excellent professional qualities. He con tracted the morphine habit, however, as result of treatment after an accident, and has gone steadily down hill ever since. He has abandoned his family and is living with another woman (Mrs. R.), but on account of his children his wife will not take action against him. The woman with whom he is maintaining relations at present came from a good family, whose members feel very bitter toward Dr. Byrnes. She had been previously married and has one son, and both mother and son have become victims of the opium habit.
Many efforts have been made, by friends and by physi cians, to reform this man. He has been a voluntary inmate of three institutions for treatment, and has been given excellent opportunities for work at his profession all, however, without success. Both the man and Mrs. R., probably largely because of their use of opium, have become unreliable, dishonest, and dissolute. They have had charitable aid at various times, in the form of gro ceries, clothing, rent, tickets for night lodgings, etc. — all given as an incentive to influencing them to lead a different life, but without permanent success.