Saloonkeeper

“ Now, the saloon was the pride of the Skipper; and when the old man tried to bribe her out of it—he talked to her from the open skylight above—and she insulted him with her mouth, he sent for his men. From behind a shut door of the saloon alley way we heard a fusilade of tusks in the saloon, shrieks from the maddened dog, uproar from the parrots, and the hoarse shouts of the crew. The pig was charging ten ways at once. ”

“ What say you, Paul?"
"I say, no! I wouldn't engage in such a business, not if it paid me a hundred thousand dollars a year. I think these first class saloons are just as great a curse to the community as the low groggeries, and I look upon them as the fountain heads of the low groggeries. The man who begins to drink in the well lighted and splendidly furnished saloon is in danger of finishing in the lowest dens of vice and shame."
"As you please," said John Anderson stiffly, "I thought that as business is dull that I would show you a chance, that would yield you a handsome profit ”

“ We hope to float at 6.15 to-morrow morning, but to make sure of being able to get her off, we have been transferring some ballast to the dinghy, by way of lightening the yacht—a horrid business handling the pigs of lead, heavy, greasy, and black. The saloon is an inferno, the deck like a collier’s, and ourselves like sweeps. ”

“ I saw lots of stylishly fitted-up stores along the avenue, and as there was so much style I thought there ought to be lots of money. Everyone I met was dressed to kill, and it seemed to me that no one was poor. Finally I came to a saloon which was bejeweled [Pg 132] and be-cut-glassed outside, and swell inside, having marble floors and fancy fixtures. Into this saloon I stepped and strode up to the bar, where I ordered a schooner of beer. I laid down a nickel on the bar and then leisurely strolled over to the lunch counter, which contained a pretty good spread of free lunch. ”

“ The saloon keeper knows the boss, if he is not himself the boss or his lieutenant, and can steer him to the man who will spend all day at the City Hall, if need be, to get a job for a friend, and all night pulling wires to keep him in it, if trouble is brewing. Mr. Beecher used to say, when pleading for bright hymn tunes, that he didn't want the devil to have the monopoly of all the good music in the world. The saloon has had the monopoly up to date of all the cheer in the tenements. ”

“ The town had shaken off the lethargy of its morning sleep: there were many men in the street, some riding back and forth, disdaining to walk the distance of a hundred yards from a saloon they had just left to the saloon to which they were going, some sitting their horses in the shade, lounging in the saddle as a man may lounge in an arm chair, some idled on foot at the swinging doors, while many others made a buzz of deep throated voices at the bars and over the gaming tables. ”

“ The saloon was the hollow stern, a triangle with a little fireplace in its base, and four bunks in its sides. Its centre was filled with a triangular table, over which, pendent from the skylight, was an oil-lamp in chains. A settee ran completely round the sides, and on that one sat for meals, and used it as a step when climbing into a bunk. The skipper cheerily hailed me. "As you're in for it, make yourself comfortable. Sorry we can't do more than give you the seat to sleep on. But the chief thing in this ship is fish. ”

“ Ordinary business flourishes by day but the busiest and most profitable period of a saloon keeper’s operations is—or was—likely to occur in the middle of the night. Like any other sound merchant a saloon man might be expected to attend his affairs in person during the peak—so Robin expected to find Jim Bond behind his own bar at that hour. ”

“ Others run out, snatch a pocketbook and make for cover. Later on they look up their cronies at the saloon and spend the money for beer and cheap whisky, and eat free lunch provided by the management.
There are numerous other such places, more especially on South Clark near Van Buren street. Some of the saloons in that section are alive with young fellows who prey upon the public for a living. They do not always beg their way, either, for they often take a run out and stick up somebody, filch a purse or break into a store. ”

“ By eleven the saloon used to become almost unbearable, from the combined odours of roast onions, pickles, and punch, and at half-past the lights were put out, and the company dispersed, most to their berths, but some to smoke cigars on deck.
Though the Cunard steamers are said by English people to be as near perfection as steamers can be, I was sorry not to return in a clipper. There is something so exhilarating in the motion of a sailing-vessel, always provided she is neither rolling about in a calm, lying to in a gale, or beating against a head-wind. ”

“ But this matter of a stampede is not controlled by reason; it is a thing of the nerves; while you are ridiculing someone else your legs are carrying you off on the same errand.
In a mining-camp the saloon is the community's heart. However little a man cares to drink, or to dance, or to play cards, he goes to the saloon as to the one place where he may meet his fellows, do business, and hear the news. The saloon is the Market Place. ”

“ About five o'clock the porter of the store next to it began to sweep off the sidewalk. I saw that my uniform took his eye, and he was as polite to me as though I had been an admiral in the United States Navy. I talked with him awhile, asking him questions about the city. Finally I brought the matter of the conversation down to the subject of saloons. I thought there were plenty of them. He told me some of them had a separate bar for colored people, where they sold the cheapest corn whiskey and apple brandy for ten cents a glass, and made nine cents on every glass they sold. ”

“ Yonder is a man intoxicated. He staggers and falls; his head strikes the curb-stone; the blood besmears his face; the police lift him up and start with him to the station house. Did you hear a saloon keeper say: "That's my creation; I put up that job and I'm proud of my work."
Some one said recently in defense of the business: "The saloon keeper deserves more consideration." This writer should know that consideration has been the source of its undoing. Lord Chesterfield considered it and said: "Drink sellers are artists in human slaughter." ”

“ I said. "It is not more than half the size of the one the messenger laid on the counter in the saloon."
"It ought not to be more than half as large," added the colonel. "It appears that there has been some earnest talk among the passengers of the Islander. What could this have been about except the division of the spoils?"
While he was speaking, I had taken off the paper which inclosed the package. It was the same color as that I had seen in the saloon. On removing the covering, I came to the two tin plates, and saw a pile of money, in bills, between them. ”

“ The custom had fallen off in the saloon across the street to such extent that the proprietor was putting up the shutters. The saloon on the corner of the alley was still waiting for stray customers and I crossed over to it with the thought that the inmates might give me a possible clue. A man half-asleep leaned back in a chair by the stove with his chin on his breast. Two rough-looking men at a table who were talking in low tones pretended not to notice my entrance, but their furtive glances gave more eloquent evidence of their interest than the closest stare. ”

“ The one good thing is that we haven’t any of those chaps on board us, sitting with fixed bayonets on the saloon hatch and we in the saloon. The first thing to be done is to steal as much distance out of her as we can without her kicking.”
He went to the engine-room speaking tube:
“Below there, heave any muck you think likely to make smoke in the furnaces; there’s a lot of old rubber and canvas waste on the cable deck. I’ll tell Mr. Harman to have it sent down to you. ”

“ The saloon is the place in which ladies and gentlemen sit together. If a lady is so inconsiderate or selfish as to violate the rules of the boat, by inviting her husband or lover to take a seat in the ladies’ cabin, there is no impropriety in sending the chambermaid to remind him that he must leave the room. This is often done, and always should be. We once saw a gentleman (or a pretended one) so pertinacious in remaining, (it is true his lady-love urged him “not to mind,”) that the captain had to be brought to threaten him with forcible expulsion. ”

“ Some walked to and fro in the saloon; others paced the deck amidships. None liked to go forward, where every jar of the machinery, every shackle that passed the drum, every clank, made their hearts leap into their mouths. Captain Anderson, Mr. Canning, Mr. Clifford, and the officers and men engaged in working the ship and taking in the grapnel, were in the bows of course, and shared in the common anxiety. At dinner-time 500 fathoms of grapnel rope had been taken in, and the strain was mounting beyond 82 cwt. Nothing else could be talked of. ”

“ Squads of the passengers, or, sometimes, a single fugitive came at intervals bursting into the saloon, gasping with the effects of surprise, and the effort at speed, laughing, flushed, agitated, recounting their narrow escapes from drenching or submergence. Two or three, indeed, had caught a ducking and were repairing to their staterooms for dry clothing. There was much sound of activity from the boiler deck as the roustabouts{102} ran boisterously in and out of the rain, busied in protecting freight or in sheltering the few head of stock. ”

“ He hurried forward along the heaving, jerking deck to the main hatchway. Here he hesitated for a moment; then, knowing that, if anywhere, she must be below, set his teeth and descended. The saloon was a foot deep in water, which washed from side to side with a heavy, sickening splash, and there, carrying a bag in one hand, holding up her garments with the other, and wading towards him from the dry upper part of the cabin, at last he found the lady whom he sought.
“Be quick!” he shouted; “for God’s sake, be quick! The ship is coming off the rock.” ”

“ The [19] crew consists of 150 officers and men, commanded by Captain Webster, the senior Captain of the ‘Castle’ Company. Each of the dining saloons accommodates at one time the whole complement of passengers assigned to it,—a point of no small importance, as the trouble and worry of double meals are thereby avoided. The ship is admirably equipped in every particular, and the furnishings are of the most elegant character. The first-class dining saloon is a very handsome apartment, with panelled walls and dado, and is furnished throughout with refined taste. ”

“ But one bright night one of the heavy showers which come and go so suddenly in the tropics, without a note of warning, came sweeping down and inundated the sleepers, who came clattering and chattering, wet through, down the saloon stairs at three o’clock in the morning, calling to the stewards for creature comforts and dry blankets and disturbing every one of the passengers who had managed to defy the stifling closeness of the state-rooms and get to sleep.
There were a number of young men in the second-class saloon who were going out to the diamond and gold fields to seek their fortunes. ”

“ The ceremony of introduction having been duly performed, the tiffin-bell rang, and everybody at once filed below into the liner’s grand saloon. Meanwhile the throb of the engines betrayed the fact that the great ship was once more under way. The saloon was a very spacious and handsome apartment, elaborately decorated with paintings on the panels between the ports, and with a double row of columns running fore and aft as supporters to the great stained-glass skylight overhead. ”

“ When the guests had assembled in the pirate’s saloon it was some minutes before their host appeared. When, however, he did step into the room from his private apartment adjoining, he was altogether a different man in outward appearance than in the early morning. In place of the loose sailor summer rig which he then wore, he was now attired as a gentleman of elegant fashion of the time in which we write. His lower limbs were clothed with flesh-colored silk stockings, and fitted into a pair of pointed toed pumps with buckles of brilliants that a duchess might have envied. ”

“ Nicholas and I succeeded in chartering the sloop very cheaply; and between laughs, while getting up sail, we agreed that she was even crazier and older than she had been described. She was a big, flat-bottomed, square-sterned craft, sloop-rigged, with a sprung mast, slack rigging, dilapidated sails, and rotten running-gear, clumsy to handle and uncertain in bringing about, and she smelled vilely of coal tar, with which strange stuff she had been smeared from stem to stern and from cabin-roof to centreboard. ”

“ Twenty minutes later officers and passengers assembled in the saloon for dinner. Although lacking the luxurious trappings of a first-class liner's saloon, the Donibristle's was quite a comfortable, well-equipped apartment. Electric lights in frosted glass bulbs with amber shades threw a warm, subdued light upon the long table. ”

“ She carried so many passengers, short-haul or long-distance, that every seat in the dining saloon was filled with weary folk at night and some paced the decks or sat on the piles of lathes or the oil-barrels. Lumber and barrels were stored everywhere, the hold was crammed, and cattle in the prow came and went mysteriously as the vessel moved into one cove or bight or tickle after another in the dead of the night or the silver cool of the early morning. ”