Books with title Ten nights in a bar-room and In His Steps

"Ten Nights in a Bar Room" by T. S. Arthur. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

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The novel is presented by an unnamed narrator who makes an annual visit to the fictional town of Cedarville. On his first visit, he stops at the new tavern, the Sickle and Sheaf. The proprietor, Simon Slade, is a former miller who gave up the trade for the more lucrative tavern. The business is a family affair, with Slade's wife Ann, son Frank, and daughter Flora assisting him. The narrator also observes the town drunk, Joe Morgan. The father of a loving wife and family, he meets his moral downfall when introduced to alcohol. Morgan quickly becomes an alcoholic and spends most of his time at a bar. One day, his daughter begs him to return to his family. He initially ignores her desires until she is hit in the head by a flying glass as she goes to retrieve her father. Slade had initially thrown the tumbler at Morgan so, to a degree, her death is on his hands. On her deathbed, the daughter begs Morgan to abandon alcohol, to which he agrees. The novel progresses through the ruinous fall of more characters all at the hands of hard drink and other vices (gambling becomes another major reform notion in the text). Shay spends some time discussing corruption in politics with the corrupt "rum party" candidate from Cedarville, Judge Lyman. The narrator continually notes how even the drinkers in the story call for "the Maine Law" which will prohibit alcohol from being so temptingly available. The novel closes with the death of Simon Slade, already mutilated from an earlier riotous sequence of murders and mob mentality, at the hands of his son. The two had gotten into a drunken argument and Frank strikes his father in the head with a bottle. In the final scene the narrator sees the post with the once pristine and now gross and rotten Sickle and Sheaf totem chopped down after the town's moral fiber finally showed itself in a series of resolutions that led to the destruction of all the alcohol on the premises.

‘Ten Nights in a Bar Room,’ considered by many to be one of the best temperance novels of the 19th century, tells the story of a mill owner who sells his mill to build a tavern in town, A morality tale, it portrays the evil of alcohol as told by a visitor to the town who stays at the tavern for ten days over a period of ten years. As the book so vividly portrays, customers and owner are all too weak to resist the temptations of demon rum. Written by Timothy Shay Arthur, this book provides a fascinating glimpse into the pro-temperance literature of the 19th century.