I remember a prominent citizen who told of a sad case which happened in the city of Newcastle-upon-Tine in the north of England. It was about a very young boy, an only child whose father and mother thought everything of him and did all they could for him. He fell into bad ways, took up with evil characters, and finally joined a gang of thieves.
The boy didn't tell his parents about his behavior and one day, when he went with the gang, he broke into his parents house. The thieves stayed outside the building, while he crept in and started to steal. He was caught in the act, taken into court, tried, convicted, and sent to the prison for ten years. He worked on and on in the convict's cell, till at last his term was out, and at once he started for home.
When he came back to the town, the young man started down the street where his father and mother used to live. He went to the house and rapped on the door. A stranger opened it and stared him in the face. "No, there's no such person lives here, and where your parents are I don't know," was the only welcome he received. So he turned through the gate and went down the street asking even the children that he met about his folks, but everybody looked blank.
Ten years had rolled by and though that seemed perhaps a short time, how many changes had taken place! Where he had been born and brought up he was now an alien, and unknown even in the old haunts.
At last he found a couple of townsmen who remembered his father and mother. They told him that the old house had been deserted long years ago, that he had been gone but a few months before his father was confined to his house and very soon after, had died broken-hearted. His mother had gone out of her mind.
The young man went to the asylum where his mother was, and went up to her. "Mother, Mother," he cried, "don't you know me? I am your son." But she raved and slapped him on the face and shrieked, "You are not my son," and tore her hair.
He left the asylum more dead than alive, so completely broken-hearted that he died in a few months.