A tense moment as a young woman tries to distract a man (her father? husband?) from arguing with another man in a saloon. Men watch the scene with amusement while one of the bartenders reaches to a high shelf for another bottle of liquor.

Engraving based on Ten Nights in a Barroom.

Like The Drunkard, Ten Nights in a Barroom was a popular temperance melodrama during the 1850s. Other plays centering on temperance reform during that decade included The Bottle, Aunt Dinah's Pledge, The Drunkard's Warning, and The Fruits of the Wine Cup.These reform melodramas traced a character's journey from respectability to the degradation of drink (and sometimes back to respectability), giving audiences a vicarious glimpse of alcohol-induced wickedness. This illustration depicts the unruly interior of a saloon.