"Well, madam, you've had your way, now I'll have mine," said her husband, and filling a glass, he called his son downstairs. "Here, Allan," he said, "drain that, or I'll thrash you soundly."
"Father, you forget, I belong to the Band of Hope," said the boy appealingly.
"Drink it, I say," and the infuriated man seized the child's arm.
"Roland, will you blight your boy's life as you have your own?" interposed the mother. Down came the cruel hand on wife and child, and, while a volley of oaths rained from the man's lips, Allan lifted the glass and drained the contents.
"Now, go to bed, and remember that when your father speaks you are to obey. I'll make a man of you yet, you young milksop!"
Sobbing bitterly, Allan crept to his bed, and his anguish found vent in the pitiful question: "What else can I be but a drunkard when my father makes me drink?"
What, indeed, could be the future of the child, who from that time was compelled to fetch, and then partake of his brutal father's cup? What marvel that with early acquired taste for strong drink, he impatiently cast aside the restraint of a tender mother, and followed with rapid footsteps his father to a premature dishonoured end!
Another scene, the closing one, and all that is needful for reproof and warning will have been drawn from the life-history of Roland West.
"He's worse to-day, mum," said the nurse of a workhouse infirmary to a woman closely veiled, who was bending over a bed upon which lay stretched the form of an old man. What a face for any woman to gaze upon, and know that once it had been the joy of her life to mark the light of intellect and the tenderness of devotion sparkling and kindling in the eyes that now only turned in their sunken sockets with dim, vague unrest from side to side.