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Bar Patterns
Two famous characters who patronized the Bar for
many years, day after day, would remain until curfew
hour. They were known to the crowd only as "Harry"
and "Sherry." They would come in together and take
a position at one corner of the counter and one would
order the drinks. While these were being consumed,
Harry and Sherry would stand with 'their heads close
together, talking in whispers. The first drink dis–
patched, both would move a step 'onward, and from
that coign of vantage order a second round, meantime
continuing the whispering. This' progression would keep
on, step by step, until the bar closed; by which hour
t.hey would have reached the point from which they
started.
The friendship of Harry and Sherry and their peculiar
rite survived at least until the Bar was put out of busi–
ness by prohibition. The two men were said to be artists.
One died some years ago. The other, now looking more
than four score, was seen in the lobby of the_old hotel
not long before it closed. Louis Dery, for years a cashier
in the Bar and later the hotel's Credit Manager,
watched him pause at the portal through which, for so
many years, he had passed to spirituous exaltation. The
famous altar of Bacchus, over which he had poured so
many libations and spent with his friend so much time
and money, had long disappeared and its site had been
claimed by a humidor. The old man looked long at the
spot where had stood the corner from which he and his
chum had begun their daily circuits. Then he sighed,
shook his head and tottered hurriedly out of the hotel
as if he were fleeing from ghosts.
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