Tap room

“ He informs you that the coach is up the yard, and will be brought round in about 15 minutes. . . . You retire to the tap-room. . . . for the purpose of procuring some hot brandy and water, which you do—when the kettle boils, an event which occurs exactly two and a half minutes before the time fixed for the starting of the coach. The first stroke of six peals from St. Martin's Church steeple as you take the first sip of the boiling liquid. You find yourself in the booking office in two seconds, and the tap waiter finds himself much comforted by your brandy and water in about the same period. ”

“ The reasons were that the room in question [Pg 250] was the tap-room, and the fourth round of beer was already imbibed. One voice—in which the local accents were missed—led the talk; the rest interjaculated.
Mr. Pinckney pricked up his ears, and of course whipped out the insatiable note-book. Simultaneously, in the kitchen, connected with the tap-room on the opposite side, the landlord and his wife, with the schoolmaster and his, were bending forward, and solemnly listening to the stranger's wild stories, with the door ajar. ”

“ We caught, as well, the small square hall, flanked by the black-oak counter, behind which were banked bottles of various shapes and sizes, rows of pewter tankards and the like, the whole made comfortable with chairs cushioned in Turkey red, and never empty—the chairs, I mean; the tankards always were, or about to be.
This tap-room, I must tell you, is not a bar in the American sense, nor is the girl a barkeeper in any sense. ”

“ Tap′room, a room where beer is served from the tap or cask; Tap′root, a root of a plant or tree striking directly downward without dividing, and tapering towards the end, as that of the carrot; Tap′ster, one who taps or draws off liquor, a publican, barman.—On tap, kept in cask—opp. to bottled: ready to be drawn upon. [A.S. tæppe, seen in tæppere, one who taps casks; Dut. tap, Ger. zapfen, a tap.] ”

“ Fisher, proceeding on her arrival to the bathroom, saw this word, she went back to her room again and ordered a sponge-bath instead; and when the others found what using the bathroom meant, and how reluctant the servants were to leave them alone with the stove, and how Francesca positively refused to, and stayed with her back turned watching the tap, and how the remaining servants waited anxiously outside the door till the bather came safely out again, they too had sponge-baths brought into their rooms instead. ”

“ Generally the taproom is the best dining-room that is at your service, and you mustn't be particular if the place is full of tobacco smoke, or if horse-play and larking is going on all the while. Some publicans give you more decent quarters, but not many. But, lor! for that matter, when a man fumbles his way down off his box in the winter time with his feet like lumps of ice, and his face feeling as though it had been warnished and froze dry, he isn't very particular what place he puts his head into, so long as it is warm and snug. ”

“ If he prefer a real genuine swim he finds it near the back door of the hotel in a tank a hundred feet long, in fresh cold water with the air barely taken off. In his room he has a soft bed to sleep upon, surrounded by tasty furniture, and eats in a large dining room attended by silent waiters, and provided with fruits, wines and viands fit to satisfy the most fastidious. ”

“ Here is a simpler design for a toilet-table (Fig. 22) which would look very well standing between the windows of a lofty room. If it was found that a good light for the looking-glass had been sacrificed to the general harmony of the room, then a smaller glass might be placed in a window, just for occasional use.
Fig. 21.
Some of the old-fashioned “toilet-equipages” are very beautiful just as they have come down to us. They are occasionally made in silver, and comprise many articles which cannot by any possibility be brought within the faith or practice of a modern belle. ”

“ The better class of old-time taverns always had a parlor. This was used as a sitting room for women travellers, or might be hired for the exclusive use of some wealthy person or family. It was not so jovial a room as the taproom, though in winter a glowing fire in the open fireplace gave to the formal furnishings that look of good cheer and warmth and welcome which is ever present, even in the meanest apartment, when from the great logs the flames shot up and “the old rude-furnished room burst flower-like into rosy bloom.” ”

“ He led us to a little parlour back of the taproom. Here a door opened into the tap itself, and in this door was cut a large square window so that the good man of the inn could sometimes sit at his ease in his great chair in the snug parlour and observe that his customers had only that for which they were paying. It is a very good plan, for I have seen many a worthy man become a rogue merely because nobody was watching him. ”

“ One room which we have investigated has in one corner a sunken marble tub and in the center the radiator. The gold work in this room is beautiful, but practical, of a design that takes plumbing into the arts.
The thoroughly equipped woman’s bathroom must have the usual tub, showers, lavatory, watercloset seat, a closet or two in the walls, a table, towel rack, brackets for soap and sponge, hooks for hanging things, scales, rugs, a chair or stool, toilet paper receptacle, mirrors and tiling for floors and wall. ”

“ It is too dim to read by and scarcely bright enough to enable you to distinguish the expression upon the lineaments of your fellow passengers. A scoop net of green cloth on a wire springs back over the light to cover it when you want to sleep: Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The toilet room is Spartan in its simplicity, and the amount of water in the tanks depends upon the conscientiousness of a naked heathen of the lowest caste, who walks over the roofs of the cars and is supposed to fill them from a pig skin suspended on his back. ”

“ A pugged partition and double-doored lobby separate the rooms. Space is left in the hot room for a full-length couch opposite the radiating stove, which has a metal screen around to protect the more adjacent [Pg 125] walls from the heat. A lavatrina is provided, as shown at the enlarged section. A nook is formed for a shower. This recess could be fitted with enamelled iron screen and hood, as at the end of elaborate slipper-baths. A couple of couches, lavatory, and toilet table are compactly arranged in the little frigidarium. ”

“ I was working too hard; a rest would do me good. . . .
Drip, drip, drip. . . .
Nothing strange about that, surely! I thought, I would have it out with my friend the plumber, all the same. . . . . Meanwhile, I must try and check the dripping. . . .
As I entered the bathroom the tap, seeming to protest against my interference, began to drip faster, and I reached out my hand to stop it. Then I felt a peculiar stinging, burning sensation of intense cold across the backs of my hands as though someone were passing a piece of ice over them, and the knob of the tap began slowly to unscrew itself. ”

“ A strong working bench, fitted with drawers and cupboards, and having gas-pipes at intervals for attaching different kinds of jets, is an indispensable fixture. A close cupboard or closet, which is connected by a pipe with the chimney or the external air, is required to receive vessels emitting corrosive or evil-smelling vapours; the door of this closet should be of glass. A sink, with a copious supply of water, must be at hand, for washing apparatus. A glass, a stoneware barrel, with a tap of the same material, is required for holding distilled water. ”

“ If the room be an essentially modern one, and especially if it be in the country, nothing affords a prettier spot of colour in it, than the old-fashioned toilet-table of deal covered with muslin draperies over soft-hued muslin or batiste. Of course the caricature of such an arrangement may be seen any day in the fearful and detestable toilet-table with a skimpy and coarse muslin flounce over a tight-fitting skirt of glaring pink calico, but this is a parody on the ample, convenient stand for toilet necessaries, the draperies of which should be in harmony with the other colours of the room. ”

“ Rooms for drinking the water and for bathing are constantly patronized, and at times the population of the city includes 14,000 visitors. King's Bath is the most popular. It is a fine old classic structure, fronting on one of the principal streets, in which is what is called the Pump Room, a saloon 85 feet long, 48 feet wide, and 34 feet high, elegantly finished and well furnished, where every convenience is provided the invalid for rest and refreshment, and for drinking the water from a constantly flowing fountain. ”

“ The state-rooms were large and airy; beds occupied the places of the usual uncomfortable bunks; the dining-saloon was situated amidships, where the vibration of the screw was least felt; the drawing-room was arranged aft; and a dainty boudoir for the ladies extended across the whole width of the counter. The smoking-room was in a convenient position under the bridge, and the bathrooms, four in number, were luxury and completeness itself. ”

“ The fact is, a bathroom ought to be equipped for comfort, like a drawing-room, a good, full, velvety room; and as things are it is solely equipped for singing. In the drawing-room, where we want to sing, we put so many curtains and carpets and things that most of us can’t sing at all; and then we wonder that there is no music in England. Nothing is more maddening than to hear several men refusing to join in a simple chorus after dinner, when you know perfectly well that every one of them has been singing in a high tenor in his bath before dinner. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is certainly much cheaper to have a properly managed earth-closet and to confine the plumbing in the house to a kitchen sink, a force-pump, a tank and a kitchen [46] boiler. Certain advantages, however, of an indoor water-closet, as regards comfort, convenience and health, must be conceded. A bath-room with a plain bath-tub is also a great convenience and an important aid to bodily cleanliness. ”

“ In the kitchen is a sink with a swinging table at one side, and room for a portable table on the other. At one side of the sink may be the cistern-pump, and on the other side the well-pump. It should be placed back against the wall, and with handles that are well out of the way when not in use.
It is entirely unnecessary to place the pumps in the yards of low-cost houses, as is so common. If a driven well is used, it [Pg 111] could be driven so as to be next to the kitchen sink. If it is a dug well, it may be placed on the outside, and connected through lead pipes with the sink on the inside. ”

“ An inventory of their respective contents was completed by the following items—one low bedstead void of bedding, one chair, one table with traces of varnish in places and one looking-glass in a state of139 desquamation. To these may be added one window and two doors. One door led into the common room, the other into a cemented bathroom containing a battered tin bath, skinned even of its paint.
We each of us had an Indian servant or bearer who, with mechanical melancholy, made the toilet table pretentious by placing upon it the entire contents of our respective dressing bags. ”

“ Two people cannot comfortably stand in the compartment, and when one is dressing the other has to stay on his shelf or go out in the corridor which runs along the side. There is no ventilation, and the toilet-room, about as big as a barrel, is for both sexes. ”

“ A perfectly clean room, although quite bare of ornament, is inviting, and when its owner puts in her little individual touches, her books on a hanging shelf, which her brother can make for her, or which she can buy for forty or fifty cents, her favorite engravings, cut from illustrated papers if she chooses and simply tacked on the wall, her pot of primroses on the window-sill, her toilet table draped with white net over pink silesia, her plain scrim curtains at the window tied back with bits of ribbon, the room will be dainty and pretty enough to please the most fastidious. ”

“ The foreman said that that room would be the bathroom. No plaster was on the walls yet, but the laths were all on. And there wasn't any bathtub yet, nor any basin; only some pipes sticking up out of the floor. ”

“ In installing a ventilating system it is well to remember that toilet rooms should always have direct outdoor ventilation, the smoking room must be on a separate duct and the kitchen and lunch rooms on another. ”

“ In a darksome room, imagine how the subdued brightness of its metal mountings would afford coigns of vantage to every stray sunbeam or flickering ray from taper or fire! And in its deep, commodious drawers too, might be neatly stowed away every detail of toilet necessaries. On it should stand a mirror which must imperatively be required to harmonise, set in a plain but agreeable frame without anything to mar the severe simplicity of the whole. There are several pieces of old furniture, however, which are better adapted to be used as toilet-tables than the subject of the illustration. ”