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Old Waldorf Bar Day s
Well, it's gone. As a matter of fact, it went out of the
back door of the hotel when prohibition came in the
front . And despite the booze subsequently lugged in
sui teases into the hotel by gouty but valorous Old Guards–
men, by visiting Chicago aldermen, on one of their
periodical sprees, by the Sons of Something or Other,
and by the thousand or so banqueteering organizations
that made steady customers for its grand ball room and
smaller rooms up to the last, and which annually would
have stocked a freight train with empties, that quantity
was no measure for what was annually consumed on the
premises during the quarter-century before the lid went
on, or the cork went in, or the bottle was smashed, ac–
cording to the way you did your little Volstead Act. And
in those days, the ambulance cases that were driven to
Bellevue Hospital, head-first, from the side door in the
Astor Court, were not taken to the ward for the
poisoned.
Well, the bar, as such, disappeared more than ten
years ago, as noted. The famous bar counter, on which
empty "schooners" often grounded, if one may revert to
a once much-favored form of
bon mot,
was soon afterward
cast out, and the nearest approach to evidence I can ob–
tain as to its survival to this day is the information that
it still serves a mission in some speakeasy in Hester
Street. But the cock-eyed individual who handed me the
tip as a price for mr silence, did not have the grace to
l?lip me its number.
And now for a dash of history to make oblivion of re–
gret. Dashes sometimes had' that effect, if numerous and
of one potent liquid hereinafter to be discussed.
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