“This story shows how much gentleness and sympathy can do to raise the most hopeless and degraded. Straggles is always drunk, his wife and children are in a terrible state of rags and dirt. The family is the terror of the village. Miss Gibbs visits Mrs Straggles and assists her to tidy the wretched room and make it more home like, and provides her with a dress. Straggles is impressed with this new state of things. He finally gives up the drink and sets to work to make a comfortable home for his family.”