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He was barely forty years old, in the prime of his life, and a man who had never dissipated. But he was a thoroughly bad man for all that, and the number of men whom he had killed had been forgotten. His feats of strength were the talk of barrooms and bunk houses.
He would hang on the edge of a party of men drinking together in front of a bar, on the slim chance of being "counted in" when the question went round, "What'll you have?" He was perpetually being impelled out of saloons at foot-race speed by the officials whose function it is, in barrooms, to substitute an objectionable person's room for his company.
That night the wine flowed out like a purple flood; but the men and women who drank were people of culture, wealth and position, and did not seem to think it was just as disgraceful or more so to drink in excess in magnificently furnished parlors, as it was in low Barrooms or miserable dens where vice and poverty are huddled together.
The millionaire was there, the countryman, the slave dealer, the man with the goatee. The barrooms and corridors were noisy with excitement, loud talk of politics, of railroads, of trade, of slavery; denunciation of the Whigs, curses for the defeat of Cass. I saw bloodshot eyes, reeling steps, coarseness, cruelty, wastefulness in drink.
Suffering the paralysis that would not allow him to make a full smile and finding the eyes x- rays that could go, for the most part, beyond pleasant countenances to a suffering innate in other beings, it was no wonder that he was peculiar. It was no wonder that at Christmas parties or barrooms he sat and drank in silence feeling like a buffoon for not acting like one.
The recess for the holidays was over on my reaching the capital, yet in the mean time a crude outline of the proposed company was under consideration. On the advice of our silent partner, who well knew that his business associates were slightly out of their element at social functions and might take alarm, all banquets were cut out, and we met in little parties at cafés and swell barrooms.
He, Whiskey Dick! the butt of his friends, the chartered oracle of the barrooms, even in whose wretched vanity there was always the haunting suspicion that he was despised and scorned; he, who had dared so much in speech, and achieved so little in fact! he, whose habitual weakness had even led him into the wildest indiscretion here; he now offered a reward for that indiscretion!
You don't need to get drunk, but you're to pretend it. "Gamble. Be a good fellow. Hang round the barrooms. I don't care how you play the part, so long as you make friends, learn the ropes. We can meet out here at nights to talk and plan. "You're to take sides with those who're against me. I'll furnish you with the money. You'd better appear to be a winning gambler, even if you're not.
He duly canvassed every likely dive, every "melina," every gambling house and yegg hang out. He engaged in leisurely games of pool with stone-getters and gopher men. He visited bucket-shops and barrooms, and dingy little Ghetto cafés. He "buzzed" tipsters and floaters and mouthpieces. He fraternized with till tappers and single-drillers.
Those of the young women who win the prizes make their fortunes, for they are at once engaged at high salaries for the more aristocratic barrooms. Fancy what an attraction and even fascination the gin palace with lovely girls behind the bar must have to the youth of a great city.
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