A child shall lead them: The house that Jack built; and Another Moses

A child shall lead them by Mary E. Ropes is a collection of moral tales written in the late 19th century. Set in a London suburb, the opening story, The House that Jack Built, is a Christian temperance parable about the miserly publican John Drinkrow, his hard, calculating son Tom, and his wayward son Ratcliffe, whose wife Nancy and their little daughter Maida become instruments of grace. It explores the corrosive pull of greed and drink, the pain of family estrangement, and the surprising redemptive power of a child’s love.

The opening of the book introduces the glittering public-house “that Jack built,” run by John Drinkrow, a respectable but miserly publican who dotes on his hoarded gold and neglects his sons’ true welfare. After a drunken request for money, Ratcliffe is angrily cast out, while Tom—cold and grasping—refuses him help and hides the fact that Ratcliffe has secretly married Nancy and has a child. John, stung by a Bible text about the love of money, throws the book away; later Ratcliffe finds it on the dust-heap as he slips out of the yard. A burglary then strikes the strong-room while John is away; Tom wounds the fleeing thief, and Ratcliffe soon returns to Nancy bloodied and sullen, carrying unexplained gold and haunted by guilt. Kind housekeeper Mrs. Curr champions the outcast couple as John remarries the shrewd Sarah Moo; illness drives Ratcliffe to Devon to stay near Nancy’s priest-uncle, while their little Maida, brought to him later, melts her father’s heart with a simple bedtime prayer—“Jesus loves you”—prompting contrition and a return to his late mother’s Bible. At the start of the crisis, Ratcliffe telegraphs his father that he is dying and must confess; John receives the message at table with his new wife and her sailor son Frank, as Tom hardens himself and urges him not to go.