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Updated: August 11, 2024
The walls were lined with all the representative characters of the town, good and bad, rich and poor; merchants, bar-keepers, politicians and miners. In the center the old-time church-goers sat. Up the front, filling every inch of space, the starched and well-washed youngsters wriggled and grinned and sang without fear, as hymn after hymn was announced.
Two or three speculators were bidding on commission, and there were a few planters, some of them mounted, and a mixed multitude of tradesmen, loafers, bar-keepers, newspaper reporters, and idlers in general. At either end of the long table sat an auctioneer, who behaved with the traditional facetiousness of the profession.
And who was Mr. Teale, and where did he come from, and why was he traveling alone? Standing there in the evening twilight, on the rough brick walk in front of the Palace Hotel, to that group of rough-handed men in unkempt locks and woolen shirts and overalls, to those shirt-sleeved, well-oiled, red-faced bar-keepers, with the landlord in the center, the passenger told his story.
Bar-keepers in spotless white linen prepared the famous American drinks, innumerable in variety, with a dexterity bordering on art and a stolidity out of which nothing could shake them. The wall behind the bar was studded within reaching distance with an array of gleaming polished metal taps; back of the bar were the passageways to the pantries and kitchen.
It was a jury composed of two desperadoes, two low beer-house politicians, three bar-keepers, two ranchmen who could not read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! It actually came out afterward, that one of these latter thought that incest and arson were the same thing. The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one expect?
In France they have bar-keepers, waiters, chamber galls, guides, quotillions, " "Postilions, you mean," I said. "Well, postilions then, for the French have queer names for people, that's a fact; disbanded sodgers, and such trash, for spies. In England they have airls and countesses, Parliament men, and them that call themselves gentlemen and ladies, for spies." "How very absurd!" I said.
Who so chatty as hotel-clerks, market women, auctioneers, bar-keepers, apothecaries, newspaper-reporters, monthly-nurses, and all those who live in bustling crowds, or are present at scenes of chatty interest. Solitude breeds taciturnity; that every body knows; who so taciturn as authors, taken as a race? A forced, interior quietude, in the midst of great out-ward commotion, breeds moody people.
Sailors, Mariners, Bar-keepers, Crimps, Aldermen, Police-officer's, Soldiers, Landsmen generally. Long live the Commodore! :: Admission Free. To conclude with the much-admired song by Dibdin, altered to suit all American Tars, entitled Performance to commence with "Hail Columbia," by the Brass Band. Ensign rises at three bells, P.M. No sailor permitted to enter in his shirt-sleeves.
The bar-keepers, it need hardly be said, were angry; it was going rather too far, they thought. Was it the province of a military man to advocate, still less to enforce, temperance? Had not the "black" an "equal right" to quench his thirst? The canteen-men thought so; some of them, indeed, were sure of it, and went so far as to defy "despot sway," by ignoring it.
"Most like he didn't hear Gabriel tootin'," was Hootchinoo Bill's suggestion. "Hello, Jim! Wake up!" he shouted. The old man unlimbered lamely, blinking his eyes and murmuring automatically: "What'll ye have, gents? What'll ye have?" They followed him inside and ranged up against the long bar where of yore a half-dozen nimble bar-keepers found little time to loaf.
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