Bartender

“ 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. ”

“ Tall Tourist. Policeman, did you hear? Come, ladies and gentlemen!
(They depart, fiercely gesticulating. The café grows more lively. The sound of clinking beer glasses and the clatter of steins is heard, and the beginning of a loud German song. The bartender, who has forgotten himself while talking to somebody, starts suddenly and runs off, looks up to the sky with a hopeless air and wipes the perspiration from his face with his napkin. Angry calls of Waiter! Waiter!) ”

“ I then yelled quite loudly, and two men broke their arms trying to get out the door, and the bartender trembled so when he mixed a drink for me you would have thought he was putting up a milk shake for a girl who wanted to catch a street car.”
“Yes?” said the bartender.
“Yes, sir, I am feeling a little out of sorts today, and it always makes me real cross and impatient when I get that way. A little gin and bitters always helps me. It was six times, I think, that I fired, the time I was telling you about. Straight whisky would do if the gin is out.” ”

“ An efficient bartender’s first aim should be to please his customers, paying particular attention to meet the individual wishes of those whose tastes and desires he has already watched and ascertained ”

“ The barkeeper permits them to sit about the stove and by shivering invite the sympathy of transient customers. The dodge works well, especially about Christmas and election time, and the sitters are able to keep comfortably filled up to the advantage of their host. But to look thoroughly miserable they must keep awake. A tramp placidly dozing at the fire would not be an object of sympathy. To make sure that they do keep awake, the wily bartender makes them sit constantly swinging one foot like the pendulum of a clock. ”

“ He entered a place curiously like the saloons of ante-prohibition days, with a long greasy bar with sawdust in front and streaky mirror behind, a pine table at which a dirty old man dreamed over a glass of something which resembled whisky, and with two men at the bar, drinking something which resembled beer, and giving that impression of forming a large crowd which two men always give in a saloon. The bartender, a tall pale Swede with a diamond in his lilac scarf, stared at Babbitt as he stalked plumply up to the bar and whispered, "I'd, uh— Friend of Hanson's sent me here. ”

“ And the bartender KNOWS that that young man, with his fine reasonings and his belief in himself, is the confirmed drunkard of year after next. He has seen the beginning of many such cocktail philosophers, and the ending of the same.
The way NOT to be a drunkard is never to taste spirits. ”

“ And he had a drink after each half completed movement. Then suddenly he pulled and let go a shot. He looked around. The bartenders stood with their hands lifted, like squirrels’ paws, and other patrons of the place were skittering without dignity out of the way, drawing toward the front and rear entrances through which the ones who always avoided trouble vanished like mist cloud shadows. The big fellow took some more drinks, and at intervals in a tentative kind of way he let go a booming shot. ”

“ Grant. The bartender, and the band and the floorman. The waitresses worked on tips.
456 Mr. Hubert. All the employees were paid by cash?
Mrs. Grant. Yes, but they signed receipts for it.
Mr. Hubert. I understand. Who was Pauline Hall in that operation, what did she have to do?
Mrs. Grant. Well, sometimes she helped on the floor as a hostess and, of course, while I was ill, she took over the management for 2 weeks in 1963 in November. She has been a waitress in our club on and off. She has known us about 8 years. She has been a bartender when we needed one—she is a very nice person.
Mr. Hubert. ”

“ The big money’s usually in the safe, an’ the bartender can be induced to open the safe just as easy as he can be persuaded into opening the cash drawers. An’ say, Percy, I’d never let a bartender get as close to me as you let that fellow get to you. He might start something, then you’d have to begin shootin’ an’ that would alarm the town an’ ball up the program. ”

“ Sometimes I changed hands twenty times a day. I saw the inside of every business; I fought for my owner’s every pleasure. It seemed that on Saturday nights I never missed being slapped down on a bar. Tens were always slapped down, while ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded. I got in the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a little straight or some spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I could. Once I got tied up in a great greasy, roll of bills in a pushcart peddler’s jeans. ”

“ The bartender shrugged again. "Not much I can do about it, is there? Want another shot?"
"Mix it this time. A little soda. Is that the general attitude? Business as usual?"
"I hear some business is picking up. ”

“ Returning to the bar he ordered another bottle of beer, and as he drank it he practiced upon the bartender some of his recently acquired Spanish and learned, though not without considerable difficulty, that he might find lodgings for the night upon the second floor of the bank building. ”

“ The bartender of the "Retreat" sniffed suspiciously and eyed the open door thoughtfully, holding aloft the bar-mop while he considered. Then he put the mop on the bar and went to the door, where he peered out. "Huh!" he grunted. "Hogin' that?" he sarcastically inquired. Sammy held out the bag and led the way to the bar. "Where's th' Bar-U? Yes? Do their own broncho-bustin'? Who, me? Ain't nothin' on laigs can throw me, includin' humans an' bartenders. What? Well, what you want to get all skinned up for, for nothin'? Five dollars? If you must lose it I might as well have it. One fall? All right ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ Three practical men went strolling West,
Out into the West as the Bar came down;
Each said to the workmen, “May you be blest,
For moving this obstacle out of the town!
For cabs still crawl, and ’busses still creep—
While stultified aldermen vainly weep,
Their ancient Bar bemoaning.”
Three barmaids stood in their gas-lit bower,
And filled each glass as the Bar came down;
And the practical gentlemen looked at the shower,
And the mud that was rolling up slimy and brown,
For men will drink, and women must keep
Replenishing beakers, while potions deep
Are quaffed to the Bar and its “boning.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among the regular visitors are at least half a dozen young men, belonging to our best families—who have been raised with care, and well educated. That their presence here is unknown to their friends, I am quite certain—or, at least, unknown and unsuspected by some of them. They do not drink a great deal yet; but all try a glass or two. Toward nine o'clock, often at an earlier hour, you will see one and another of them go quietly out of the bar, through the sitting-room, preceded, or soon followed, by Green and Slade. ”

“ The waiter brings the cold punch, and the party begin to enjoy themselves. They do not drink much, but they mix their drinks rather injudiciously. They take sherry upon cold punch, and champagne upon that, dashing in a little port and bottled stout between. They are getting merry, not to say jolly, but not at all inebriated. ”

“ These waiters are certainly ubiquitous; at the table there is one at each elbow, at night a stranger is escorted to bed by a grand procession, and one pulls off his boots while another unbuttons his shirt-collar, and a third lights the gas and turns down the bed-clothes; a waiter meets you at the door, another takes away your overcoat and gives it to a waiter who presents you with a brass check for it—there are waiters in the bar, in the washroom, in the barber-shop, in the cellar, in the reading-room; waiters running races through the halls all night ”

“ On my return to the tavern the tragedy was already concluded; and, being a feeble one in itself and indifferently performed, it left so much the better chance for the Story-Teller. The bar was thronged with customers, the toddy-stick keeping a continual tattoo; while in the hall there was a broad, deep, buzzing sound, with an occasional peal of impatient thunder,--all symptoms of all overflowing house and an eager audience. I drank a glass of wine-and-water, and stood at the side scene conversing with a young person of doubtful sex. ”

“ On the outside of the tavern, whither we betake ourselves to wash, are a tub of water, a basin and a towel, for all the guests; but as only one person can perform his ablutions at a time, it will be necessary for us to form ourselves in a line, and take our turn—the first comers being entitled to the front places. We are now ready to replenish the inner man. The bar is convenient for those who wish to imbibe. Breakfast is announced. We seat ourselves at the table. Before us is a reasonable quantity of beans, pork and flapjacks, served up in tin plates. ”

“ The spirit of the place steals over you. On entering, with a quarter of an hour to spare, your idea was a cutlet and a glass of claret. In the face of the refreshment-room waiter, the notion appears frivolous, not to say un-English. You order cold beef and pickles, with a pint of bitter in a tankard. To win the British waiter’s approval, you must always order beer in a tankard. The British waiter, in his ideals, is mediæval. ”

“ Soiled waiters ran to and fro, swooping down like hawks on the unwary in the throng; clattering along the aisles with trays covered with glasses; stumbling over women's skirts and charging two prices for everything but beer, all with a swiftness that blurred the view of the cocoanut palms and dusty monstrosities painted upon the walls of the room. A bouncer, with an immense load of business upon his hands, plunged about in the crowd, dragging bashful strangers to prominent chairs, ordering waiters here and there and quarreling furiously with men who wanted to sing with the orchestra. ”

“ 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. ”