For John's Sake, and Other Stories

A glass of wine offered to celebrate an engagement becomes a test of conviction for Ruth, a parlour maid who has promised to avoid intoxicating drink. Her employers question the pledge, and John, the gardener she intends to marry, takes her caution as a slight against her character. Ruth answers from painful memories of the damage drinking brought to her childhood home. This opening gives Annie Frances Perram's collection its close attention to the pressures surrounding an apparently ordinary social custom.

These short stories argue for total abstinence through domestic troubles, religious duty and the consequences of habitual drinking. Another tale follows a respected pastor whose dependence on alcohol places his ministry and family's security at risk. Readers interested in temperance fiction will find direct moral arguments carried through conversations between servants, employers, spouses and church members, with personal loyalty repeatedly tested by strongly held beliefs.