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OldWaldorf Bar Days
make them forget the worry or turmoil of the day's
work. There were no screened doors. Anybody could
look in, and most every man who entered the Waldorf in
those days did look, at least once. It was known all over
the country; in mining camps from Mexico to Alaska,
it evoked recollections of tastes and odors tha t parched
many a throat. As a matter of fact, its fame was world–
wide.
MECCA OF THE THIRSTY
PILGRIM
Visitors to the Old Waldorf during its latter days found
difficulty, did they seek to recreate the
pictu~e
of that
great hall where Bacchus so long drew his greatest throngs
of pilgrims and devotees, and where such, in turn, drew
inspiration of the widest variety boasted by the elective
courses offered by the American School of Drinking.
Here was long a sort of fountain head. Here, cleverly
conceived by masters and put together by experts skilled
to such a degree that with eye or a deft motion of a
bottle they could gauge the flow of an alcoholic liquid to
the fraction of a drop, new drinks were composed, tested,
and then offered to tickle jaded palates, or to relieve
headaches and other aftermaths of excessive inebriation
that had sought relief elsewhere in vain. Not along the
whole length of Broadway, from the Battery to the north–
ernmost goat-grazed Harlem cliff, could one pounce upon
a pick-me-up of such potency
a~
members o'f its faculty
could deliver, and often did, to the student who was
ready to fall at their feet and drink. That pick-me-up,
research reveals, consisted of "two dashes of acid or
lemon phosphate, one-half a 'jigger of Italian Vermuth,
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