He introduced family prayers, much to the disgust of his son Tom and the amusement of his daughter Mary.

The privacy of family affairs was not entirely respected by the Kimper family, for Sam soon heard remarks from street loafers, as he passed along, which indicated that the devotional exercises of the family had been reported, evidently by his own children, and he heard quotations from some of his weak and halting prayers pass from mouth to mouth and elicit peals of coarse laughter.
Nevertheless he found some encouragement.

His son Tom was not quite so much of a cub at home as he had been, and actually took to trying, in a desultory way, to find work, although his father's offer to teach him the trade which had been learned in the penitentiary was declined very sharply and without any thanks whatever.

Billy, the younger boy, had an affectionate streak in his nature, which his father succeeded in touching to such an extent that complaints of Billy's truancy were nowhere near so numerous as they had been just after his father's return.

Mary, the youngest daughter, was a less promising subject.