Tavern

“ An air of comfort and quiet broods over the whole town. Yellow moss clings to the seaward sides of the roofs; one's eyes are not endangered by the intense glare of painted shingles and clapboards. The smoke of hospitable kitchens curls up through the overshadowing elms from huge-throated chimneys, whose hearth-stones have been worn by the feet of many generations. The tavern was once renowned throughout New England, and it is still a creditable hostelry. ”

“ While walking up the hollow road that winds round the hill, you see on one side the entrances to the deeply excavated cellars, on the other a tavern, overshadowed by linden-trees, offering refreshing temptations to the thirsty visitor. ”

“ As usual, every one you look at puts out the hand to beg. The tavern where we stopped to dine seemed more like a great barn, or cavern, than any thing else. We go groping along perfectly dark stone passages, stumbling up a stone staircase, and gaining light only when the door of a kind of reception room opens upon us—a long, rough-looking room, without any carpet, furnished with a table, and some chairs, and a rude sofa. ”

“ Presently, the door of the tavern was darkened and in stepped a man of vigorous age, with an angular and sun-burnt face, whose only striking features were two little, piercing, crafty and savage eyes half hidden under his eyebrows thick and grizzly like his hair, that escaped in disorder from under his old woolen cap. ”

“ I'll keep a little tavern
⁠Below the high hill's crest,
Wherein all grey-eyed people
⁠May set them down and rest.
There shall be plates a-plenty,
⁠And mugs to melt the chill
Of all the grey-eyed people
⁠Who happen up the hill. ”

“ The tavern, it must be remembered, as a convivial resort, is the social antipodes of the back room of Squire Edwards' “store.” If you would consort with silk-stockinged, wigged, and silver shoe-buckled gentlemen, you must just step over there, for at the tavern are only to be found the hewers of wood and drawers of water, mechanics, farm-laborers, and farmers. ”

“ Men stamped their feet and swung their arms in the vain attempt to warm the blood. Gladly and eagerly did all troop from the gloomy meeting-house to the cheerful tavern to thaw out before the afternoon service, and to warm up before the ride or walk home in the late afternoon. It was a scandal in many a town that godly church-members partook too freely of tavern cheer at the nooning; the only wonder is that the entire congregation did not succumb in a body to the potent flip and toddy of the tavern-keeper. ”

“ Generally, when you enter a country tavern of a summer's noon, you find some miserable creature besotting himself on a bench behind the table, half asleep over his stale beer or schnapps, who will stare at every new-comer, and brag and rail in some unintelligible fashion. ”

“ The Tavern, 1628,
Is a degree, or (if you will) a pair of stairs above an ale-house, where men are drunk with more credit and apology. If the vintner’s nose be at the door, it is a sign sufficient, but the absence of this is supplied by the ivy-bush: the rooms are ill breathed like the drinkers that have been washed well over night, and are smelt-to fasting next morning. It is a broacher of more news than hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here by some spungy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. Men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise ”

“ And before the tavern were tied, stamping and shaking their heads for the early flies, many fine horses, and among them Parson Downs' and the Barry brothers', and from within the tavern came the sound of laughter in discordant shouts, and now and then a snatch of a song. Then a great hoarse rumble of voice would cap the rest, telling some loose story, then the laughter would follow—enough, it seemed, to make the roof shake—and all the time the hum of the bees in the honey-locust outside went on. ”

“ The tavern, for instance, is the place of instruction or worship, of which the tavern-keeper is the teacher or priest, and the wine the spirit of divine knowledge which is poured out for his disciples; the idol is God; beauty is the divine perfection; shining locks the expansion of his glory; down on the cheek denotes the cloud of spirits that encircles his throne; and a black mole is the point of indivisible unity. ”

“ They had passed the evening at the tavern drinking and roaring, for a tavern is like a free port, and no one can be sent out of it as long as they have money to pay their score and to rattle in their pockets. ”

“ A tavern is only half a house, just as one of these new-fashioned screw-propellers is only half a ship. Suppose you walk round and take a look at my place. I own quite a respectable house over yonder to the left of the town. Do you see that old wharf with the tumble-down warehouses, and the long row of elms behind it? I live right in the midst of the elms. We have the dearest little garden in the world, stretching down to the water's edge. It's all as quiet as anything can be, short of a graveyard. The back windows, you know, overlook the harbor ”

“ A tavern is the best picture of human folly, nature wearing no garb of hypocrisy.
You must know that the Boar's Head had once been the home of the "Blackfriars," then a residence of a bishop, a convent, a brewery, and finally fell into the hands of the grandfather of [46] Dame Quickly, who bequeathed it to his posterity and the public as a depot for plum pudding, roast beef, lamb, birds, fish, ale, wine, brandy and universal pleasure. A boar's head, with a red light in its mouth was kept constantly burning from sunset to sunrise, where wandering humanity found welcome and rest. ”

“ I'll be bound you have stopped at half a dozen taverns!' And I shall say: 'Your honor! am I a criminal or a heathen? My old woman is giving up her soul to God, she is dying, and am I going to run from tavern to tavern! ”

“ In the tavern, among groups of men collected on shore from wind-bound vessels, at gatherings around the cabin fire, and in those small craft that were constantly going from one part of the bay to another, not only these tales, but others, irrevocably lost, were elaborated and made current in days homely and toilsome yet invested with an atmosphere of romance. ”

“ We have to-day scores of places of amusement, and means of amusement, where in earlier days all diversions centred at the tavern. The furnishing of food and shelter to travellers and to horses, and of liquid comfort to neighbors, was not the only function of the tavern, nor the meeting for cheerful interchange of news and sentiment. Whatever there was of novelty in entertainment or instruction, was delivered at the tavern, and it served as the gathering place for folk on scores of duties or pleasures bent. ”

“ If they go far enough, they will find the very original of every one of the hundred pictures they have seen, painted by pen or pencil. They will find that all of them have been true copies from nature. Here is the portly-looking, well-to-do, two-story tavern, standing out with its comfortable, cream-colored face broadside to the street. ”

“ In these retired places the tavern is first of all a house—elsewhere, last of all, or never,—and warms and shelters its inhabitants. It is as simple and sincere in its essentials as the caves in which the first men dwelt, but it is also as open and public. ”

“ I find here a race very marked in its characteristics, altogether in harmony with the soil that supports it; meagre, gloomy, rough, and angular in its forms and in its instincts. At the tavern every one has his knife in his belt, and he drives the point into the lower face of the table, between his legs; after that they talk, they drink, they contradict one another, they become excited, and they fight. The houses are of an incredible dirtiness. ”

“ When we land, and take up our bags to ascend the hill to the white tavern of Port Hastings (as Plaster Cove now likes to be called) , the sun lifts himself slowly over the treetops, and the magic of the night vanishes. ”

“ In a deep valley, on the other side of the Monto, we stopped at a wayside tavern, in which we found an intelligent-looking man, and a boy, who were refreshing themselves with wine and bread and cheese. ”

“ The tavern is a ditch to thieves, and the devil’s castle in order to war against God and His saints; and those that sustain the taverns are sharers in all the sins that are done in their taverns; and forsooth if one said or did as much shame to their father or to their mother or to their lads, as one does to their heavenly Father and to our Lady and to the saints of paradise, they would grow very angry and take other counsel in regard to it than they do. ”

“ Just upon the edge of the great road from Petersburg, Virginia, to Richmond, and only about fifteen miles from the latter place, there stands a somewhat ancient and famous public tavern, quite notorious in its better days, as being the grand resort for most of the leading gamblers, horse-racers, cock-fighters, and slave-traders from all the country round about. ”

“ A Tavern Interior.—There are two tavern interiors here. In one (dated 1661) five peasants are grouped in the foreground. Before a large chimney stands a man in a blue vest and gray hat, holding a mug in his hand; opposite is a man in a blue mantle and a white hat, who is filling his pipe; in the chimney corner an old man is dreaming; and to his right an old woman is listening to what a man in a furred cap, with a pipe in his hand, is saying to the man before the fire. ”

“ Then, for a crowd began to gather round them, wearily enough they turned up another street at hazard. Thus they wended their way back toward the great central rock, thinking that there they might find some more hospitable tavern. ”

“ The tavern was by way of being an ancient one, for the oak props were blackened with age and the upper storeys jutted out one above the other, in the way our forefathers were used to build in walled towns, where every foot of space was of account. ”

“ Seven o’clock—how long one has lingered in this pleasant tavern! Now we leave, after many farewellings, and wander homewards due east, not passing the church at all; we cross the streamlet which has accompanied us hither and immediately enter that wood, familiar by this time, the once awe-inspiring forest of the——. It is already dark here, under the firs, but the rich, resinous perfumes of daylight are still hanging in the air; no dew has fallen to quench them. So we move along the dim path in silence; we have talked ourselves out, at Schlins. ”

“ In one of the most narrow and crooked of streets, often lost amid the winding of greater thoroughfares, and safely hidden from the watchful eyes of the King's soldiers, was situated a tavern, patronized for the most part by those who replenished their purses when low, by running some belated traveler through the back, and taking what money he had. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Being set ashore, with very little money in their pockets, and no definite plan of operation in their heads, they sought out a cheap tavern, where they regaled upon a smoking steak, and certain flowing mugs of beer, as only men just landed from the sea can revel in the generous dainties of the earth. ”

“ Following his guidance, and climbing successively over a number of huge trunks, stumbling through a net-work of branches, and plunging into a shallow stream up to the ankles in soft mud, we reached at length what he called his tavern, at the further side of the clearing. It was a log building of a single apartment, where presided "the wife," a smart, plump, good-looking little Irishwoman, in a stuff gown, and without shoes or stockings. ”

“ A good tavern always draws people to a place, while a miserable old tumble-down of an affair, badly kept, such as we have had for years, as surely repels them. You can generally tell something about the condition of a town by looking at its taverns. If they are well kept, and doing a good business, you will hardly be wrong in the conclusion that the place is thriving. ”

“ They show us how the tavern was the great focus of news long before the newspaper fully supplied the intellectual want. Much of the business of early times was transacted in taverns, and it is to some extent in the present day. According to the age, the tavern reflects the manners, the social tastes, customs, and recreations; and there, in days when travelling was difficult and costly, and not unattended with danger, the traveller told his wondrous tale to many an eager listener; and the man who rarely strayed beyond his own parish, was thus made acquainted with the life of the world. ”

“ The study of tavern history often brings to light much evidence of sad domestic changes. Many a cherished and beautiful home, rich in annals of family prosperity and private hospitality, ended its days as a tavern. ”

“ When one had to meet a friend, a tavern was an expensive place; "in an ale-house you must gorge yourself with pot after pot, sit dully alone, or be drawn in to club for others' reckonings." Not so at the coffee-house: "Here, for a penny or two, you may spend two or three hours, have the shelter of a house, the warmth of a fire, the diversion of company ”

“ Though to-day somewhat shadowed by a formless reputation of being frequently applied to hostelries of vulgar resort and coarse fare and ways, the word tavern is nevertheless a good one, resonant of sound and accurate of application, since to this present time in the commonwealth of Massachusetts and in other states such large and sumptuous caravansaries as the Touraine and the Somerset Hotel of Boston are in the eye and tongue of the law simply taverns, and their proprietors inn-holders or tavern-keepers. ”