Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England Stephen Grattan's Faith, A Canadian Story, by Margaret M Robertson. ________________________________________________________________________ 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. ________________________________________________________________________ STEPHEN GRATTAN'S FAITH, A CANADIAN STORY, BY MARGARET M ROBERTSON. CHAPTER ONE. 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."