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Concerning the Curriculum
other days, they have been decoded, rearranged and
more or less classified.
The compiler of that original volume was Joseph Tay–
lor, for many years, under the sobriquet of "Dan, the
Barbey," one of the dozen or so experts required to staff
that Bar when business was brisk. Taylor, who had been
a personage of note-at least he had been in the public
eye-went into comparative obscurity when the Eigh–
teenth Amendment took away his occupation, and in
the last decade of the old hostelry's existence, instead of
spending his days saying, "Yours, sir?" and, after the
performance of certain· rites, passing artistically com–
posed appetizers a,nd exhilarators over the bar to stock–
brokers and financial and industrial magnates, to pro–
fessional men and students and the flotsam and jetsam
for whom these bought drinks; instead of hearing the
chatter of big business and the hum of what was often
very informative conversation-abounding in hints as
to how to make money on a turn of
th~
market-instead
of all this, he had descended to the wine cellar and the
rather obscure title of "assistant in the beverage depart–
ment" of the hotel, handling such elevating and stimula–
tive potations as ginger ale and soda water. Only upon
certain starred occasions did the old bar horse find in
his nostrils the strong, familiar odors that made mem–
ories gush back.
To his immediate boss, the steward of his department,
were intrusted the keys of the innermost cellars where
reposed a good deal of the rare pre-war stock acquired
by the owners of the hotel in
1918,
when they took over
its operating company from the George C. Boldt estate;
[ 109]