Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There

The business is a family affair, with Slade's wife Ann, son Frank, and daughter Flora assisting him.

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).

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.

Arthur used the book to argue that women needed to steer men to the path of morality to protect the home.

[2][3] Ten Nights in a Bar-room was a financial success for Arthur and became the second most popular book of the Victorian Era, following Uncle Tom's Cabin.