Bar (establishment)

“ It is difficult to think that we really believe in banking, as the solid serious profession we talk about, when our banks are not only nearly as numerous, but very like our public-houses. Both are more often than not glorified corner shops. There is the public bar and the private bar in each. The public bar is of any shape so long as there is sufficient counter space, and the private bar or manager’s room has the same mahogany and frosted glass. Externally, each shows, too, a nice taste in pink, polished granite. ”

“ Bar could be light in hand, or heavy in hand, according to the customer he had to deal with. With Ferdinand Barnacle he was gossamer. Bar was likewise always modest and self-depreciatory—in his way. Bar was a man of great variety; but one leading thread ran through the woof of all his patterns. Every man with whom he had to do was in his eyes a jury-man; and he must get that jury-man over, if he could. ”

“ The waiters, in black swallow-tails and white aprons, passing here and there with trays of bottles and glasses.
The quiet and sumptuous bar-room, with purplish men softly drinking in little alcoves, while the barkeeper, mixing bright liquors, is rapidly plying his bottles. ”

“ The barkeeper and proprietor, both in their shirt sleeves, are behind it. On one side of the bar is a slightly-raised platform, upon which is a piano-player, a violinist and a shrill fifer. This is the music that charms and attracts. Around the room are men of all kinds, sailors, laboring men, seedy individuals, lovers, thieves, a few poor gamblers, fellows in hard luck and waiting for "something to turn up." Sprinkled over the place, talking, laughing, joking and striving to induce them to buy drinks, are a number of the waiter girls. ”

“ The bar is one of the most—if not the most—important departments in the hotel; comparatively nothing is drunk at dinner, but the moment the meal is over, the bar becomes assailed by applicants; moreover, from morning to midnight, there is a continuous succession of customers; not merely the lodgers and their friends, but any parties passing along the street, who feel disposed, walk into the bar of any hotel, and get "a drink." The money taken at a popular bar in the course of a day is, I believe, perfectly fabulous. ”

“ The conquests and triumphs of the American Bar in long years that have passed, attest its capacity, virtue, courage, and nobility for dealing with professional problems and difficulties that might have dashed the brightest hopes, or brought doubt to the stoutest heart. ”

“ A sporting baronet, who takes an interest in yachting; a dramatist, who has written more than one racing play, and no doubt finds the American Bar useful for his local colour; our cleverest caricaturist, and a dozen or two less well-known people, formed a solid mass before the bar, and occupied all the available tables. ”

“ The gaslights shine brightly out from the gin-palaces, and great business is in course of being there carried on. Numbers go in and out, and the glass-doors are ever on the swing. Through these doors glimpses can be caught of crowds of men and women standing at the bar drinking, and waiting to be served ”

“ Bar Practice.—Interior of a tavern, guests at tables; in the front of the picture is the saloon; a showy counter-maid is compounding a bowl of punch for a brace of customers, a military and a sporting buck, who are leaning over the bar and exchanging pleasantries with the landlady. ”

“ Modern taste is conspicuous here, nothing is gaudy, colors are subdued, and its decorations are simple even the bar itself is refined, substantial, decorous, wanting entirely the meretricious glitter and barbarous ornamentation of the old structures of this sort, and the attendants have wholly laid aside the smart antics of the former bartender, and the customers are swiftly and silently served by the deferential waiters. ”

“ The halls themselves are vast and magnificent, spread over with tables and implements for gambling. The pictures which decorate them no pen of mine shall describe. The bar-rooms are furnished with the most expensive liquors, no care or attention being spared in the compounding and coloring of them. The music is performed often by professors, and is of the best kind. The tables are sometimes graced, or disgraced, by females, who came at first masked, and who are employed to deal the cards, or who come to play on their own account. ”

“ On the right-hand side, nearest the door, is the bar, over which presides a genius of the male sex, whose chief attractions consists of a decided red head, and an immense paste breastpin, stuck into the bosom of a ruffled shirt. The bar is well furnished, and any drink called for, from beer to champagne, can be instantly obtained. ”

“ Of course I was noways chary of invitations to the crowd, and the bar-room being full, I made the bar my rostrum, and indulged in a piece of autobiography that was intended to gain the general consent to return to my fellow-travellers, who were reported still at Martinsburg. If I cannot boast of great success at the bar, I am as little proud of my eloquence on the bar. ”

“ A bar, at which all kinds of liquors, raw and mixed, pure and sophisticated, are dealt out, is attached to each of these establishments; and it is generally a greater source of profit to the proprietor than the table. ”

“ The bar-keeper fills, in fact, the post of commissioner of police, and the crowd that assembles in the bar-room to read the newspapers, smoke, drink whiskey, and talk politics, that is to say all travellers, would, in case of necessity, be ready to act the part of constables. ”

“ You would probably like to see somebody in the bar. Adequately to people the bar would task the pencil of a Hogarth, the pen of a Thackeray. That more genial Hogarth of our time, the late Phil May, has indeed done it exceedingly well in his “Parson and the Painter.” But the human constituents of the bar’s society vary with the hour of the day. In the morning the journalistic element predominates. But it is when night begins to fall that the life of the bar is at its brightest. ”

“ And has it ruined the Chancery Bar?—​ask them in 237 Lincoln’s Inn. The fact is that if we are to maintain in the face of better-educated and more thoughtful citizens the privileges and traditions of the Bar, we must satisfy ourselves and the world that the work we are doing is worthy, useful work beneficial to the community. When it fails to come up to that standard, it ought to be joyfully surrendered. ”

“ Since the Lake Nixon Club offered to serve and served out-of-state persons, and since the Club's snack bar was established to serve all patrons of the entire facility, we must conclude that the snack bar offered to serve and served out-of-state persons. ”

“ Several men of his own class were standing by him, and though early in the day, groups of gin-drinking men and women had assembled in the four compartments into which the bar was divided. The floor had been swept and covered with sawdust, which gave it a [131] comfortable appearance, while its spaciousness and highly-varnished hundred-gallon hogsheads, the gilded frame-work of the plate-glass panelling, the bright rows of wine and spirit bottles, and the active movements of the landlord and two barmen, rendered the place attractive and pleasant to the miserably clad customers. ”

“ He did not just relish my remark.
"Between quiet, thrifty, substantial farmers, and drinking bar-room loungers, are many degrees of comparison."
"Excuse me, sir!" Simon Slade elevated his person. "The men who visit my bar-room, as a general thing, are quite as respectable, moral, and substantial as any who came to the mill—and I believe more so. The first people in the place, sir, are to be found here. Judge Lyman and Judge Hammond; Lawyer Wilks and Doctor Maynard; Mr. Grand and Mr. Lee; and dozens of others—all our first people. No, sir; you mustn't judge all by vagabonds like Joe Morgan." ”

“ Very few men know how to properly enter a bar-room and what to do after they arrive. How to get into a bar-room without attracting attention, and how to get out without police interference, are points upon which our American drunkards are lamentably ignorant. ”

“ Those bars have been abolished, and, under the present system, an effort is being made to furnish homelike, attractive club-houses, where the enlisted men may pass their leisure time in comfortable chairs, with pleasant surroundings, games, newspapers, magazines, books, writing materials and a well-filled library. We give them a lunch-room and a bar which are much more attractive than any of the native bazaars can offer. ”

“ The wide-open front gave view of much of the barroom including even a section of the bar. Numerous figures moving about were easily discernible, while up above in the gambling rooms, the outlines of men were reflected upon the windows.
A hum of voices echoed out into the night, but the platform in front of the door was deserted. Occasionally some wanderer either entered or departed, merging into the crowd within or disappearing through the darkness without. ”

“ As evening began to fall, the gambler's unsuccessful pursuers, one after another, found their way to the tavern, and by the time night had fairly closed in, the bar-room was crowded with excited and angry men, chafing over their disappointment, and loud in their threats of vengeance. That Green had made good his escape, was now the general belief ”

“ Now, you know as well as I do what the bar is. You must be polite to the gentlemen you serve. There are certain gentlemen who always come to me, and don't care to be served by any one else, and if I didn't speak to them they wouldn't come to the bar. The manager is very sharp, and would be sure to mention it.”
“Whom do you mean? That fellow with the yellow moustache that walks about with his frock-coat all open—a sort of apotheosis of sherry and bitters?” ”

“ Behind the bar, a bar which was always full of racing men, journalists, coaching men, men from the Stock Exchange, men about town—for those were the days when no man in the movement thought it undignified to be seen standing up in a place of refreshment—was the restaurant. ”

“ As he passed through the outer door, Slade retired from the bar-room.
"Trouble coming," I heard the bar-keeper remark, speaking partly to himself and partly with the view, as was evident from his manner, of leading me to question him. But this I did not feel that it was right to do.
"Got the sheriff on him at last," added the bar-keeper.
"What's the matter, Bill?" inquired a man who now came in with a bustling, important air, and leaned familiarly over the bar. "Who was Jenkins after?"
"The old man," replied the bar-keeper, in a voice that showed pleasure rather than regret. ”

“ On the ground-floor there is a spacious and scrupuluously clean bar, and the bar space in front is partly occupied by a bagatelle-table for the innocent amusement of those who have neither taste nor talent for dancing. ”

“ The sale of paupers at the tavern was much more frequent than of criminals. It was an exhibition of curious contrasts: the prosperous and thirsty townsmen drinking at the tavern bar, and the forlorn group of homeless, friendless creatures, usually [Pg 221] young children and aged folk, waiting to be sold to the lowest bidder for a term of feeble service and meagre keep. ”

“ No expense is spared to attract custom, the bar-keepers are “artists” in their profession; rich soft velvet sofas and rocking-chairs invite the lounger; but popular feeling runs strongest in favour of the saloon that contains a pretty woman to attend the bar. ”

“ There are no broad reading-rooms and parlors, with a plentiful supply of papers from all parts of the country, as in the great hostelries at home; the bar is a dingy nook, scarcely larger than the office, and the most conspicuous ornaments in it are the handles of the beer-pumps. ”

“ Nothing to do with the Bar that LOCKWOOD, ASQUITH, and REID adorn; merely a counter, at which they sell what JEMMY LOWTHER alludes to, with a bewitching air of distant acquaintance, as "alcoholic liquors." MORTON, whose great ambition in life is to make people thoroughly comfortable, wants to close the Bar. ”

“ The great janitors, both of mighty girth, who stand at the outer doors, look in occasionally to give a message, for from about twelve in the morning to midnight the American Bar is as busy as a beehive, and each edition of the evening papers is anxiously bought and scanned by most of the habitués, who have, as a rule, a tinge of the racing man about them. ”

“ An exception is the bar, which, of course, was a fixture and part of the inn structure. Our modern bar with its almost invariable ugliness, its row of vertical handles for drawing beer, and its aggressive [Pg 245] cash register, is a poor survival of the Jacobean bar, an example of which is still in existence at the Maid’s Head, Norwich. It is worthy of recollection that the high stools which enable one to sit at a bar are quite of modern origin. Bar lounging evidently did not become a habit until the nineteenth century. People sat down and had their refreshments at ease. ”

“ Bar-rooms are annexed to every species of public building,—in the theatres, in the hotels, in the bath-houses, on board the steam-boats,—and there are even temporary buildings which serve this purpose erected at certain distances along the rail-roads. Though the gentlemen drink more than any other gentlemen, the lower orders here are more temperate than with us. The appearance of a drunken man in the streets is comparatively rare here ”

“ He now determined upon studying for the bar, and was duly called at Gray's Inn on 26 Nov. 1828, becoming a Q.C. in July 1851, and a bencher of his inn in November 1851. conveyancing and chancery bar business was the branch to which he wisely, for he was no orator, confined his attention, and in this division of the law he quickly attained to a leading position. ”