"You can generally tell something about the condition of a town by looking at its taverns," says Simon Slade, the industrious miller who has just opened "a model of a village tavern" at the start of T. S. Arthur's classic American novel, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (1854). The Uncle Tom's Cabin of the antebellum temperance movement, Ten Nights describes the "consequences of tavern-keeping" with a photographic vividness. Arthur treats the modern reader to a slice of life in a typical nineteenth-century tavern, describing the people, the furnishings, and the day-to-day operation of a busy tavern that serves the public with a stage house, a bar-room, a restaurant, and numerous rooms to rent by the night, week, or month. Modern readers may not agree with the novel's argument—that "liquor-selling is the way to ruin"—but they are sure to enjoy the novel as Arthur weaves his political arguments into a fast-paced, sensational plot that follows the degeneration of a thrifty American village into drunkenness, gambling, murder, and riot. This Copley edition also presents brief primary materials from the period with commentaries that draw attention to medical contexts and political issues—concerning democracy, demagoguery, immigration, underage drinking, and alcoholism—that are still alive today. This edition also includes the full text of two rare temperance pamphlets that were published, like Ten Nights, for the state-by-state prohibition referenda of the antebellum period: "Temperance and Politics" presents another portrait of the close relationship between bar-rooms and the American political process, and "Female Influence for the Maine Law" exhorts women to play a larger role in the temperance crusade.

Table of Contents

Introduction
A Note on the Text and Illustrations
Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, and What I Saw There
Publisher's Preface
Night the First. The "Sickle and Sheaf."
Night the Second. The Changes of a Year.
Night the Third. Joe Morgan's Child.
Night the Fourth. Death of Little Mary Morgan.
Night the Fifth. Some of the Consequences of Tavern-Keeping.
Night the Sixth. More Consequences.
Night the Seventh. Sowing the Wind.
Night the Eighth. Reaping the Whirlwind.
Night the Ninth. A Fearful Consummation.
Night the Tenth. The Closing Scene at the "Sickle and Sheaf."
Appendix
Female Influence for the Maine Law.
Temperance and Politics.
Suggestions for Further Reading

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