Stephen Grattan's Faith, A Canadian Story, by Margaret M Robertson.
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This book was transcribed with acknowledgements to Early Canadiana
Online from their website. The scans available there were of good
quality, and the transcription went easily and well.
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.
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STEPHEN GRATTAN'S FAITH, A CANADIAN STORY, BY MARGARET M ROBERTSON.