Barber shop

“ But now all is ready for your initiation into the mysteries of the razor.”
“Mysteries they may well be called,” continued the barber, with rising spirits at the prospect of a long monologue, as he imprisoned the young Greek in the shroud-like shaving-cloth; “mysteries of Minerva and the Graces. I get the flower of men’s thoughts, because I seize them in the first moment after shaving. (Ah! you wince a little at the lather: it tickles the outlying limits of the nose, I admit.) And that is what makes the peculiar fitness of a barber’s shop to become a resort of wit and learning. ”

“ These barbers got nothing on me! I'll doggone well get my hair cut where I doggone well want to! Don't want to hear anything more about it! I'm through standing by people—unless I want to. It doesn't get you anywhere. I'm through!”
The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the Hotel Thornleigh, largest and most dynamically modern hotel in Zenith. Curving marble steps with a rail of polished brass led from the hotel-lobby down to the barber shop. ”

“ At this period, indeed, the barber-surgeon was a man of considerable importance. His shop was the gathering-place of idle gallants, who came to have their sword-wounds dressed after street frays. The gittern, or guitar, lay on the counter, and this was played by a customer to pass away the time until his turn came to have his hair trimmed, his beard starched, his mustachios curled, and his love-locks tied up. We give a picture of a barber's shop at this period; the place appears more like a museum than an establishment for conducting business. ”

“ How a cleanly man can go and await his turn in a barber shop to be shaved two or three times weekly by dirty hands, and be combed by dirty combs and brushes, and have his head dry-rubbed by hands that have been dry-rubbing other heads without being washed, when he can do the same himself at home with clean hands and implements and without waste of time, is almost incomprehensible. To gaze into a barber shop is bad enough. ”

“ My barber shop is certainly well patronized, but not so well as it used to be, which results from the fact that my neighbor, Barber Schaum, has somewhere picked up a giant, who serves to allure customers to his shop. Now, to grow a giant no great art is required; but to produce a little man like you is quite another matter. ”

“ I can more satisfactorily explain why I associate with it a vastly different personality, that of Sol Holmes, the barber, for every night at nine o’clock his little shop on Congress Street was in full blast. Many a time at that hour I have flattened my nose on his window-glass. It was a gay little shop (he called it “an Emporium”) , as barber shops generally are, decorated with circus bills, tinted prints, and gaudy fly-catchers of tissue and gold paper. ”

“ Water must be costly in Langres from the way that barber conserved it, but with no more than a handful of water, he did his work well. The face waters used by French barbers are all highly perfumed, in fact, too much so for the rough Westerner. When a man leaves a barber shop he carries a sickening sweet aroma with him and his friends know where he has been when he is as much as a hundred yards away. It may be of interest to note that the shave, hair cut, shampoo and massage cost me two and a half francs, or a little less than 50 cents American money. ”

“ On the little table, as greasy and unwashed as Makar Kuzmitch himself, there is everything: combs, scissors, razors, a ha’porth of wax for the moustache, a ha’porth of powder, a ha’porth of much watered eau de Cologne, and indeed the whole barber’s shop is not worth more than fifteen kopecks.
There is a squeaking sound from the invalid bell and an elderly man in a tanned sheepskin and high felt over-boots walks into the shop. His head and neck are wrapped in a woman’s shawl. ”

“ At this barber’s shop, permeated with the oppressive smell of cheap scents, full of tiresome flies and dirt, the customers were not very exacting. They consisted of hall-porters, overseers, and sometimes minor officials, or workmen, and often coarsely handsome but suspicious-looking fellows with ruddy cheeks, slender moustaches, and insolent oleaginous eyes. ”

“ MORNING. It is not yet seven o'clock, but Makar Kuzmitch Blyostken's shop is already open. The barber himself, an unwashed, greasy, but foppishly dressed youth of three and twenty, is busy clearing up; there is really nothing to be cleared away, but he is perspiring with his exertions. In one place he polishes with a rag, in another he scrapes with his finger or catches a bug and brushes it off the wall.
The barber's shop is small, narrow, and unclean. ”

“ Two young ladies stand in front of the completely equipped barber shop. The other businesses appear to be closed for the day so one might guess father is still in the chair doing his part in a bit of close harmony. ”

“ We have heard it said that every man's hair has a stronger growth on one side of his head than the other, but whether this barber left more hair on the strong side or not we did not know. In any case, the difference between the two sides, both of hair and beard, after the barber's operation was very noticeable. The only sublime thing about the shop was the barber himself, and possibly he thought of himself when speaking of its sublimity. He was a well-known character in Wick, and if his lot had been cast in a more expansive neighbourhood he might have filled a much higher position. ”

“ The man who was waiting began to express his impatience in rather strong language, but the barber was quite equal to the occasion, and in the course of a long and eloquent oration, while he was engaged with the customer he had in hand, he told him that when he came into a barber's shop he should have the calmness of mind to look quietly around and note the sublimity of the place, which ought to be sufficient to enable him to overcome such signs of impatience as he had exhibited. ”

“ A barber is by nature and inclination a sport. He can tell you at what exact hour the ball game of the day is to begin, can foretell its issue without losing a stroke of the razor, and can explain the points of inferiority of all the players, as compared with better men that he has personally seen elsewhere, with the nicety of a professional. He can do all this, and then stuff the customer's mouth with a soap-brush, and leave him while he goes to the other end of the shop to make a side bet with one of the other barbers on the outcome of the Autumn Handicap. ”

“ I could have crossed staves with the barber that had his dwelling over against mine, or almost stolen his pewter shaving dish from the sill where it lay. Of these conceits of mine, however, the barber was necessarily ignorant, being then busily engaged upon the exercise of his craft, which he carried on perforce above stairs, the shop below and the other rooms being used by a haberdasher and alderman, that had his goods stored there. I noted the barber particularly as well for his extraordinary grace and courtesy, as for the activity he manifested in his occupation. ”

“ After a while father Turner began to hang up some of his son's sketches upon the walls of the barber shop, among the wigs and curls and toupées, and he put little tags upon them, telling the price. The extraordinary work of his little boy began to attract the attention of the jolly barber's patrons, and by the time he was twelve years old the child had a picture upon the walls of the Royal Academy--a far-cry from barber shop to Academy! ”

“ All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a barber’s shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences in barbers’ shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I approached it from Main—a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one presided over by the best barber. ”

“ About 1804 your Selectmen ordered that after a given date no barber's shop should be kept open on Sunday morning. There was no appeal from their mandate. The fatal last Sunday arrived; the customers of the esteemed Benj. Blanchard, whose shop was at the upper part of Essex street, opposite the Endicott and Cabot mansions, came as usual to have their hair tied; it was the epoch of queues, and it was necessary to their aspect in church that their back hair should be artistically bound with ribbon and their heads nicely pomatumed, even though, like Bonaparte, they shaved their own beards. ”

“ It has been truthfully said of this old-time tradesman that one might travel from pole to pole and never encounter an ill-natured or stupid barber.
Long days are usually worked in the barber's shop, and many attempts have been made to reduce the hours of labour. ”

“ But, at all events, the barber, you perceive, has a customer already.'
As they looked across the way, they saw a well-dressed-looking man, who, from a certain air and manner which he had, could be detected not to be a Londoner. He had rather resembled some substantial yeoman, who had come to town to pay or receive money, and, as he came near to Sweeney Todd's shop, he might have been observed to stroke his chin, as if debating in his mind the necessity or otherwise of a shave. ”

“ The barber’s shop was a favourite resort of idle persons; and in addition to its attraction as a focus of news, a lute, viol, or some such musical instrument, was always kept for the entertainment of waiting customers. The barber’s sign consisted of a striped pole, from which was suspended a basin, symbols the use of which is still preserved. ”

“ THE barber Touquet's shop was as usual filled with a motley crowd of people of all classes. There were gathered students, shopkeepers, pages, poets, bachelors, adventurers, and even young noblemen; for the fashion of the time permitted these amiable libertines to mingle sometimes with persons in the lower classes of society, whether they sought new sensations in listening to a language which for them had all the fascinating charm of novelty, or whether it was for the purpose of playing tricks on the persons with whom they thus mixed. ”

“ In that time, as in this, love was the dream of youth, the distraction of the middle-aged, and the memory of the old.
The barber was always the first to rise in the house. He had no servants, although his means would well have allowed it; but when anyone asked him why he did not take a boy to help him and to watch in the shop, Touquet answered,—
"I do not need anyone; I can conduct my business alone, and I'm not fond of feeding idlers who are good for nothing but to spy on their master's actions and go and talk about them in the neighborhood." ”

“ There were two others beside myself—a Russian [Pg 51] and a Russian Jew. As the Jew and I both wanted a shave we all went into the barber's shop. We were still carrying our bags, and were rather a strange party to enter a shop together. But the barbers, a pleasant array of close-shaven smiling Italians, were not put out in the least. They were ready to shave any living thing. Their job was to shave and take the cash, and not to be amused at the appearance of the customers.
In America the barber's shop has a notice outside stating the number of barbers. ”

“ Only last week we saw, with our own eyes, a pot of ale in a barber’s shop; and very good ale it was, too, for we tasted it..
Geographical distribution of barbers.—Although the majority of barbers live near the pole, they are pretty diffusely disseminated over the entire face of the globe. The advance of civilization has, however, much lessened their numbers; for we find, wherever valets are kept, barbers are not; and as the magnet turns towards the north, they are attracted to the east. ”

“ Messrs Nutts, Nosebag, Tickle, Bleak, Slowgoe, and the rest of the authorities of the barber’s shop, talked about the events [Pg xi] of the week in the old sprightly manner. Nutts and his wife cross to France, and the lady is rudely treated at the Customhouse. They were searched, said Nutts, as though they had brought a cutler’s shop and a cotton-mill in every one of their pockets. Slowgoe reproaches the barber as the advocate of universal peace, “and all that sort of stuff;” and defends war on the ground that “there’s nothing so little as doesn’t eat up something as is smaller than itself.” ”

“ When the practice of shaving off the beard was again revived in Europe, instrumental music was employed in the barber's shop, to amuse customers waiting their turn; but, at the present time, newspapers are furnished for this purpose. In taking off the beard, soft water, good soap, a brush, and a sharp razor, are the usual requisites. The razor should be placed nearly flat on the face, and be moved from point to heel. Barbers have usually some regular customers, many of whom have a box of soap and a brush appropriated to their individual use. ”

“ An hour later no one who had known him bearded and unkempt would have recognized the clean-shaven, athletic-looking young man who ran down the steps of the barber's shop and went swinging along on his way up-town. ”

“ The barber of an English king boasted, says a story, that he must be the most loyal man in the realm, as he had every day the regal throat at his mercy. The king was startled at the observation, and concluded that the barbarous idea could never have entered an honest head, and for the future he resolved to grow a beard as a precautionary measure against summary execution.
With a barber's shop in Lichfield is associated an amusing story, in which the chief figure was Farquhar, a dramatist, who attained a measure of success in the eighteenth century. ”