Ten Nights in a Bar-room

She plays "Little Mary Morgan" who is the daughter of an English squire who once owned the property where the bar-room now stands and has become basically a drunkard. The present landlord of the place decides to throw hi out and throws a glass at him. Little Mary, though, comes in at that moment and is hit with the class. She screams "Father! Dear Father! They have killed me!"

Which, of course, turns out to be the case as she dies a few days later but just before she does her father promises her to never drink again. By the end of the play has become a self-respecting gentleman.

The following material is information on the play itself.

=====A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1850s in America by Robert L. Gale; Greenwood Press, 1993=====

Ten Nights in a Bar-Room , and What I Saw There ( 1854). Novel by Timothy Shay Arthur . Ten Nights in a Bar-Room , the most famous temperance novel ever written, is divided into ten sections, entitled "Night the First," "Night the Second," and so on. In each, the narrator describes changes in the Cedarville Sickle and Sheaf tavern, which has a porch, a sitting room, a busy bar, a dining room, and upstairs bedrooms, which he visits as a commercial traveler over a ten-year period.

1.During his first stay, the narrator observes the following persons: Simon Slade, once a good miller and now the cocky owner of the new establishment; his troubled wife Ann; their daughter Flora and her young brother Frank, who though only twelve mixes drinks and drains leftover glasses; Joe Morgan, the town drunkard, whom his daughter Mary must regularly lead home; Judge Hammond and his son Willy; and Willy's violent friend Harvey Green.

2. A year later, the narrator notes this: Simon is disturbed when Frank and Harvey speak obscenely in front of Flora; the bar is full of boisterous men; Hargrove enters to beseech his son Edward to come home; and Joe looks even seedier. When Joe and Simon argue, Simon throws a glass at him, but it hits Mary in the head and cuts her dreadfully. Joe and his wife Fanny take her home.

3. The next night, at the Morgan home, feverish Mary gets Joe to promise not to drink again until she is well. She is treated by the doctor and kisses her remorseful father. Ann calls on the Morgans and returns to inform Simon, who curses.

4. That night, Joe promises Mary that he will never drink again, and she happily dies. Men at the tavern wonder whether Simon will be tried for manslaughter, and they collect $30 for the Morgans.

5. Five years pass. Simon, who was indicted but not tried, is rich, fat, and coarse, and his tavern is larger but dirty. Hammond looks haggard, and his mansion is dilapidated. Willy bosses the distillery they made out of Simon's mill, has been abusive to Flora, and loses by gambling upstairs with Harvey. Frank is too fond of alcohol, dirty talk, and hunting. A deranged woman walks down the road seeking her drink-loving son. A man on the porch describes Simon: "He does not add to the general wealth. He produces nothing. He takes money from his customers, but gives them no article of value in return--nothing that can be called property, personal or real. He is just so much richer and they just so much poorer for the exchange."

The last half of Ten Nights in a Bar-Room is even more melodramatic.

6. Next morning, it is revealed that Willy has amassed debts, and the distillery is closed. With an acquaintance named Jacobs, the narrator debates in favor of prohibition legislation. (Such talk is often repeated.) That evening, a man seeks his sons in the tavern, but they are upstairs drinking and gambling with Harvey. Outside, the narrator learns that the son-seeking woman is Willy's mother. The narrator informs Willy, who goes home with her but then sneaks back to Harvey's room.

7. The narrator learns from Jacobs that Willy was a promising law student until he began to drink. The two, at the request of Willy's father, go to Harvey's room, where they find Willy, Harvey, Simon, and a judge named Lyman. Willy calls Harvey a card cheat and grapples with him; Harvey stabs him and escapes. Willy's parents comfort the repentant lad. When he dies, his mother falls dead too. Angry men drink, form a mob, find Harvey, kill him despite the sheriffs protests, beat up and kick pompous Lyman, and blind Simon in one eye.

8. The narrator visits drunken Simon two years later. He, his town, and his tavern look dreadful. Frank is a fat, lazy, surly, profane spendthrift. Tended by Flora, Ann is in a mental institution. Edward comes in for a drink but, though taunted by his friends, leaves upon the urging of his father, who is cursed by Frank. Simon and Frank almost come to blows.

9. Next morning, a sheriffs deputy serves papers on Simon transferring his property to the wily Lyman. The narrator learns that Hammond, soon to die in the poorhouse, mismanaged his distillery, which a good man bought and reconverted into a mill, where sober Joe now works steadfastly. That night, Simon and Frank argue, and the son kills the father with a brandy bottle and is jailed.

10. Next day, the townspeople vote to buy and destroy all liquor in Cedarville and prohibit any future sales of liquor therein.

Ten Nights in a Bar-Room occasionally wanders away from its ten-part struc- ture, has too much preachy dialogue, but was immensely popular as a temperance document in its time, and is powerful even today. A dramatic version of it by William H. Pratt ( 1858) enjoyed considerable success.

Morning Oregonian, Feb. 17, 1879

The title of whatever play the ad is for is not there, but there is a notice, in very small print, about Ten Nights in a Bar-room, and this is the only reference like this I've been able to find about this play.