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Stephen Grattan's Faith, A Canadian Story, by Margaret M Robertson.
The book warns against the effects of the Demon Drink, at least at that time, for it appears that wages were low but that alcohol was expensive, so that a drunkard father could easily ruin the life of his wife and children, and perhaps cause serious, even fatal, accidents, due to violence or causing fires from a carelessly placed candle.
There are three families involved in this short book. The Morelys, where the father is a drunkard who runs out of job and money just as a very severe winter is coming on; the Grattans, where the father had previously been a drunkard, and all of whose children had perished in a house-fire which he probably had caused; the Muirs, where the old mother had been married to a dreadful old drunkard, but whose son had never drunk, and so proved, through Stephen Grattan's recommendation, to be Morely's saviour.
It is a very short book, but the story is very well told, and quite adequately so. You arrive at the end of the book with a very clear idea of what the author intended to convey.
AN OLD STORY.
Stephen Grattan had been a drunkard, and was now a reformed man. John Morely had been a drunkard, and was trying to reform. His father, though not a total abstainer, had lived and died a temperate man. But John Morely was not like his father. He had in him, the neighbours said, "the makings" of a better or a worse man than ever his father had been; and when, after his mother's death, the young builder brought home the pretty and good Alice Lambton as his wife, a "better man" they all declared he was to be; for they believed that now he would not be in danger from his one temptation. But as his business increased, his temptation increased. He was an intelligent man, and a good fellow besides; and his society was much sought after by men who were lovers of pleasure. Some of them were men who occupied a higher position than his; and, flattered by their notice, he yielded to the temptations which they placed before him.
He did not yield without a struggle. He sinned, and repented, and promised amendment often and often; but still he went away again, "like an ox to the slaughter; like a fool to the correction of the stocks."
Of course ruin and disgrace were the only ending to such a life as this. There was but one chance for him, they told his wife, who, through poverty, neglect, and shame, had still hoped against hope. If he could be made to break away from his old companions, if he could begin anew, and start fair in life again, he might retrieve the past.
At first he struggled bravely with his temptation, though it everywhere met him; but, added to the old wretched craving for strong drink, was the misery of finding himself in a strange land without friends or a good name. If some kind hand had been held out to him at this time it might have been different with him. He might, with help, have stood firm against temptation. But, before work came, he had yielded to his old enemy; and his acknowledged skill as a workman availed him little, when, after days of absence, he would come to his work with a pallid face and trembling hands.
I have no heart to enter into the sad details of the family life at this time. It is enough to say that the miseries of Alice Morely's former home were renewed and deepened now. Here she was friendless. Here she could not fall back on the farm-house, as a home to some of her little ones "when the worst should come to the worst" with them. She struggled through some unhappy months, and then they moved again and came to Littleton, and there the same tale was told over again, with even more bitter emphasis, and then something happened.
It was something very terrible. Their child most tenderly cared for, the dearest one of all to his father's-heart,--a sickly little lad of seven,--was injured severely, fatally injured, in one of his fits of drunkenness. It was quite by accident. John would have given his own life gladly to save the little moaning creature; but the child never recovered. He died with his little wasted cheek laid close against his father's, and his arms clasped round his neck. There was not much said about it. No one but Stephen Grattan and his wife, who were very kind to them in their troubles, ever knew that any accident had happened to the child.
Things went better with them for a while. John got work, and took his family to a little log-house a mile or two from the village; and Alice began to hope that the better days so much longed for were coming now. But then came sickness, and then work failed, and--there was no help for it--the husband must go in search of it, that he might get bread for his starving family. So, with heavy hearts, they bade one another good-bye. The wife stayed with her children in the little log-house on the hill, while the husband went away alone.
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