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one-half of Absinthe, shake and strain." The "shake"
was a direction, and so was the "strain." But once the
student had swallowed his lesson, he would find himself
able to stand up and order a real drink.
Now where has that pick-me-up gone? Why, not only
is the Vermuth proscribed, but Absinthe has been illegal
for many years; and who the dickens remembers what a
"jigger" was? A word of similar sound still survives in
territory contiguous to wild blackberry or huckleberry
patches down South, but-I speak from personal experi–
ence-it means something quite
differe~t
from the mod–
est containers that were used in bars for the measurement
of certain liquors, when prescriptions-then known as
recipes-were to be carefully compo'unded. And no doctor
wrote those recipes.
,
To revert to the difficulty of reconstructing the Bar–
room in later years, a humidor had been built on the
spot mostly occupied by the great bar counter, and ex–
tanks who came and looked through a once popular door:..
way often could not remember which was the proper
direction to cast their sighs of regret. The back entrance
from the lobby-past the telephone switchboard-with
its inviting facilities for gentlemen whose capacity had
been stretched, had been closed, and here young women
armed with pencils and typewriters were taking dictation
from industrial, financial, railway and legal magnates,
so classed. Across the room and against a partition were
desks for various managerial heads and factotums. And
when one's eye reached that partition they had embraced
only half of the room where for decades thirsty disciples
had learned or libationed from eight in the morning until
[ I
5)