Publisher's Preface

[From the 1854 Edition]

This new temperance volume, by Mr. Arthur, comes in just at the right time, when the subject of restrictive laws is agitating the whole country, and good and true men everywhere are gathering up their strength for a prolonged and unflinching contest. It will prove a powerful auxiliary in the cause.

“Ten Nights in a Bar- Room” gives a series of sharply drawn sketches of scenes, some of them touching in the extreme, and some dark and terrible. Step by step the author traces the downward course of the tempting vender and his infatuated victims, until both are involved in hopeless ruin. The book is marred by no exaggerations, but exhibits the actualities of bar- room life, and the consequences flowing therefrom, with a severe simplicity, and adherence to truth, that gives to every picture a Daguerrean vividness.

NIGHT THE FIRST

The “Sickle and Sheaf”

TEN years ago, business required me to pass a day in Cedarville. It was late in the afternoon when the stage set me down at the “Sickle and Sheaf,” a new tavern, just opened by a new landlord, in a new house, built with the special end of providing “accommodations for man and beast.” As I stepped from the dusty old vehicle in which I had been jolted along a rough road for some thirty miles, feeling tired and hungry, the good- natured face of Simon Slade, the landlord, beaming as it did with a hearty welcome, was really a pleasant sight to see, and the grasp of his hand was like that of a true friend.

I felt, as I entered the new and neatly furnished sitting- room adjoining the bar, that

I had indeed found a comfortable resting- place after my wearisome journey.

“All as nice as a new pin,” said I, approvingly, as I glanced around the room, up to the ceiling— white as the driven snow— and over the handsomely carpeted floor. “Haven't seen any thing so inviting as this. How long have you been open?”

“Only a few months,” answered the gratified landlord.