But, in an obscure corner of the saloon, there was a little Picture
excellently done, moreover of a ragged, bloated, New England toper,
stretched out on a bench, in the heavy, apoplectic sleep of
drunkenness. The death-in-life was too well portrayed. You smelt the
fumy liquor that had brought on this syncope. Your only comfort lay in
the forced reflection, that, real as he looked, the poor caitiff was
but imaginary, a bit of painted canvass, whom no delirium tremens, nor
so much as a retributive headache, awaited, on the morrow.
By this time, it being past eleven o'clock, the two bar-keepers of the
saloon were in pretty constant activity. One of these young men had a
rare faculty in the concoction of gin-cocktails. It was a spectacle to
behold, how, with a tumbler in each hand, he tossed the contents from
one to the other. Never conveying it awry, nor spilling the least
drop, he compelled the frothy liquor, as it seemed to me, to spout
forth from one glass and descend into the other, in a great parabolic
curve, as well-defined and calculable as a planet's orbit. He had a
good forehead, with a particularly large development just above the
eyebrows; fine intellectual gifts, no doubt, which he had educated to
this profitable end; being famous for nothing but gin-cocktails, and
commanding a fair salary by his one accomplishment. These cocktails,
and other artificial combinations of liquor, (of which there were at
least a score, though mostly, I suspect, fantastic in their
differences,) were much in favor with the younger class of customers,
who, at farthest, had only reached the second stage of potatory life.
The staunch, old soakers, on the other hand men who, if put on tap,
would have yielded a red alcoholic liquor, by way of blood usually
confined themselves to plain brandy-and-water, gin, or West India rum;
and, oftentimes, they prefaced their dram with some medicinal remark as
to the wholesomeness and stomachic qualities of that particular drink.
Two or three appeared to have bottles of their own behind the counter;
and, winking one red eye to the bar-keeper, he forthwith produced these
choicest and peculiar cordials, which it was a matter of great interest
and favor, among their acquaintances, to obtain a sip of.
Agreeably to the Yankee habit, under whatever circumstances, the
deportment of all these good fellows, old or young, was decorous and
thoroughly correct. They grew only the more sober in their cups; there
was no confused babble nor boisterous laughter. They sucked in the
joyous fire of the decanters and kept it smouldering in their inmost
recesses, with a bliss known only to the heart which it warmed and
comforted. Their eyes twinkled a little, to be sure; they hemmed
vigorously after each glass, and laid a hand upon the pit of the
stomach, as if the pleasant titillation there was what constituted the
tangible part of their enjoyment.