My Mother's Gold Ring: Founded on Fact / Eighth Edition

The narrator, a wife and mother, relates how her household happiness unravels when her husband takes to drinking, beginning with a single glass and progressing to repeated intoxication. She records the domestic consequences: angry outbursts, shame, neglect of the children, long nights of anxiety, and her own tearful prayers. Seeking relief, she pleads with the village grocer to withhold sales, appeals to neighbors, and reflects on the limits of private entreaty. The account contrasts these failed remedies with the example of nearby families who sign a temperance pledge, presenting communal restraint and moral reform as possible paths to recovery.