United States or Tokelau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Pierce sent him here; for what, no one about the establishment can tell. Anyhow, seeing it's you, I was about giving out an idea of what an interminable muddle Pierce would get everything into if he had but his own way; but, as there isn't time now, and as you won't join me in a cigar, suppose we send out and have a first-rate brandy-smash?
The hotels are thronged, nearly every kind of equipage is taken up at an almost fabulous price, and there are many respectable people mingling with jockeys, and gamblers, and libertines, and foul-mouthed men and flashy women. The bar-tender stirs up the brandy-smash. The bets run high. The greenhorns, supposing all is fair, put in their money soon enough to lose it.
Shouts and vociferations to buy resounded through the bar-rooms or taverns, decorated with glasses, tankards, decanters, and bottles of marvellous shapes, mortars for pounding sugar, and bundles of straws. "Mint-julep!" roars out one of the salesmen. "Claret sangaree!" shouts another through his nose. "Gin-sling!" shouts one. "Cocktail! Brandy-smash!" cries another.
"Perhaps." How long this pertinacious questioner might have continued his attack on the captain is uncertain, had he not been suddenly interrupted by the announcement that supper was ready, so he swaggered off to the corner of the hut where an imposing row of bottles stood, demanded a "brandy-smash," which he drank, and then, seating himself at the table along with the rest of the party, proceeded to help himself largely to all that was within his reach.
Then, a document was drawn up, signed, and witnessed, and then the captain, politely declining a brandy-smash, or any other smash whatever, left the Roving Bess Tavern with his friends, and with 200 pounds the first month's rent in his pocket. It is needless to remark, that his comrades congratulated him heartily, and that the worthy captain walked along the streets of San Francisco chuckling.
"Who are gone, and where to!" inquired Ned. "Kate an' an' the caffin. Off to San Francisco, be all that's onlucky; an' only wint little more nor an hour ago." The three friends looked at each other. "Waiter," said Captain Bunting, in a solemn voice, "bear-chops for three, pipes and baccy for six, an' a brandy-smash for one; an', d'ye hear, let it be stiff!" "Yes, sir."
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.
One mouth, that had bitten off the head of a checkerberry chanticleer, was convulsed with the acidulous tickling of sweetened laughter, till the biter was bit and a metamorphosis into the animal of attack seemed imminent; at the hands of another a warrior in barley-sugar was experiencing the vernacular for defeat with reproving haste and gravity; and there was yet another little omnivorous creature that put out both hands for indiscriminate snatching, and made a spectacle of himself in a general plaster of gum-arabic-drop and brandy-smash.
It might not be so likely a place to get fancy drinks in as Broome Street, certainly, we must admit, as we picture to ourselves some brushy ravine in which the trapper has his irons cunningly set out for the betrayal of the stone-marten and the glossy-backed "fisher-cat," but the breeze in it is quite as wholesome as a brandy-smash.
The shouts, the vociferations that resounded through the bars and taverns decorated with glasses, tankards, and bottles of marvelous shape, mortars for pounding sugar, and bundles of straws! "Mint-julep" roars one of the barmen; "Claret sangaree!" shouts another; "Cocktail!" "Brandy-smash!" "Real mint-julep in the new style!"
Word Of The Day