Bar

“ In a little filthy side-room was a bar covered with bottles and glasses, behind which stood a large, red-faced man, with a big nose, and little ferret, fiery eyes, now grinning like a satyr, now scowling like a demon, dealing out burning liquors to his miserable customers. ”

“ The bar of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters was a bar to soften the human breast. The available space in it was not much larger than a hackney-coach; but no one could have wished the bar bigger, that space was so girt in by corpulent little casks, and by cordial-bottles radiant with fictitious grapes in bunches, and by lemons in nets, and by biscuits in baskets, and by the polite beer-pulls that made low bows when customers were served with beer, and by the cheese in a snug corner, and by the landlady's own small table in a snugger corner near the fire, with the cloth everlastingly laid. ”

“ Liquor there is—but how I miss the Bar! I miss a certain attitude of mind, Congenial, which I seek but never find Except beneath the golden triple star Which from the brandy bottle shines afar. I miss a type of jest that was designed For roaring barrooms warmed with booze, and kind— Good Gawd! how coarse and low my real tastes are. I miss an ambling, splay-foot waiter's beak, Which like some red peninsula of hell Glowed through the humming barroom's smoky reek— I miss the lies I used to hear men tell Over the telephone to waiting wives— What sweet aromas had these joyous lives! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The bar-room was filled with men in shanty dress, some sitting with chairs tipped back against the wall, smoking the black French "twist" tobacco; others drinking at the bar; and others still at the tables that stood in one corner of the room playing cards with loud exclamations and oaths of delight or disgust, according to their fortune. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the young gentlemen, there is the counting-house, the store, the bar-room: the latter, as you may see through these windows, pretty full. Hark! to the clinking sound of hammers breaking lumps of ice, and to the cool gurgling of the pounded bits, as, in the process of mixing, they are poured from glass to glass! No amusements? What are these suckers of cigars and swallowers of strong drinks, whose hats and legs we see in every possible variety of twist, doing, but amusing themselves? ”

“ 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 ”

“ A little farther, and there is a great open arch, running far to the rear—a beer-house—the space between the street and the bar filled with tables bearing brown loaves cut in quarters, Semmel, and corpulent sausages. Turn which way you will, you find an endless diversity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A few, more respectably clothed and less vicious of aspect, sit writing at a table inside the bar, while a dozen or more punch-faced policemen, affecting an air of superiority, drag themselves lazily through the crowd of seedy humanity, looking querulously over the railing encircling the dock, or exchanging recognitions with friends. ”

“ The space between the bar, which ran across one end of the room, and the billiard-tables, was the favourite nightly resort of the prominent politicians and gamblers. There, if anywhere, my questions would be answered.
On entering the billiard-room I was struck by the number of men who had come together. Usually only some twenty or thirty were present, half of whom sat smoking and chewing about the bar, while the rest watched a game of billiards or took a “life” in pool. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Somehow we drifted around to the hotel where the outfit were supposed to be stopping, and lined up at the bar for a final drink. It was just daybreak, and between that Dutch cattle salesman and the barkeeper and myself, it would have taken a bookkeeper to have kept a check on the drinks we consumed—every one the last. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ English bar-maids,—the affable and wholesome type that you may encounter everywhere. But those who linger in the memory are the exceptional among them, who have made the bar-rooms over which they have presided memorable among the really worthy places which one has discovered in the world. The English bar-maid of the better class creates an atmosphere of hospitable homeliness—in the historic sense of that sweetly connotative word—which is a boon to everyone who comes within its influence. ”

“ Besides the man behind the bar, a rather rough looking foreigner, a Pole in West's judgment, three customers were in the place, two with feet upon the rail talking with the drink dispenser, and, one at a small table moodily contemplating a half emptied stein of beer. ”

“ Then came the afternoon when I decided that Satan must have his way.
There is a hotel in New York of which I had many recollections because I had frequented its barroom in the days before I went altogether down. It is a somewhat expensive-looking barroom, with heavy mahogany, gilded cornices, and frescoes of hunting-scenes on the wall. Hanging over the bar at any time during the day or night can be seen all the types that are commonly known as sporting, from the dashing to the cheap. ”

“ I stand drinks all round. What say you, fellars?” A murmur of assent answered the interrogatory.
“Good!” continued the speaker. “Hyar, bar-keeper! drinks for the crowd!”
And so saying, he of the white-hat and jeans coat stepped forward to the bar, and placed a couple of dollars upon the counter. All who were near followed him, shouting each out the name of the beverage most to his liking in the various calls of “gin-sling,” “cocktail,” “cobbler,” “julep,” “brandy-smash,” and such-like interesting mixtures.
In America men do not sit and sip their liquor, but drink standing. ”

“ At the hotel bar, you drink a glass of beer with the local celebrity and thus come into immediate touch with, the oldest inhabitant. After dinner, seated on a bench on the sidewalk, you smoke a pipe and discuss the affairs of the nation or of the town—usually the latter—with the man who in the morning offered to give you a lift and never will understand why you declined. Invariably you receive courteous replies and in kindly interest are met more than half way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The visitor will notice that drinking bars are invariable and very disagreeable accompaniments of every theatre. One bar is generally just opposite the entrance to the dress circle, an arrangement which is particularly annoying to ladies. ”

“ The consequence of the bar being the place of general resort, is, that there is an unceasing pouring out, and amalgamation of alcohol, and other compounds, from morning to late at night. To drink with a friend when you meet him is good fellowship, to drink with a stranger is politeness, and a proof of wishing to be better acquainted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There is no one to be seen. It is a cold, frost-strong, clear morning. There is no one in the bar. We stumble down the dark tunnel passage. The stanza is as if no man had ever set foot in it: very dark, the mats against the wall, the fire-place grey with a handful of long dead ash. Just like a dungeon. The dining-room has the same long table and eternal table-cloth—and [Pg 207] our serviettes, still wet, lying where we shovelled them aside. So back again to the bar.
And this time a man is drinking aqua vitae, and the dirty-shirt is officiating. ”

“ You might think that he would have gladly availed himself of this opportunity for resting awhile by sitting at a marble-topped table and drinking coffee or tea, or—horrid thought!—cocoa. But no; he isn't happy unless he leans over his refreshment; and the café-bar has [Pg 64] supplied his demands. There is something in leaning against a bar which entirely changes one's outlook. You may sit at a table and drink whisky-and-soda, and yet not achieve a tithe of the expansiveness that is yours when you are leaning against a bar and drinking dispiriting stuff like coffee or sirop. ”

“ One of the young men whom we had met rang a bell, and a man on the inside cracked the door a couple of inches; then opened it and let us in. We found ourselves in the hallway of what had once been a residence. The front parlor had been converted into a bar, and a half-dozen or so well-dressed men were in the room. We went in and after a general introduction had several rounds of beer. In the back parlor a crowd was sitting and standing around the walls of the room watching an exciting and noisy game of pool. ”

“ The English bar in the Passage is a grill-room and restaurant, and ladies can lunch there, though the sporting British element is rather too prominent. In the evening it is frequented by the theatrical world and is practically open all night. One can enjoy a peaceable supper there without having to pay the bill and leave shortly after one has sat down, as is the custom in England. ”