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OldWaldorf Bar Days
tells of finding one of those barmen in Ireland during
the early part of the century.
He had reached Cashel, a little town in Tipperary,
a hundred miles or so southwest of Duplin, famous for
a rock towering above it, on which tourists find some .
of the most imposing ruins in Ireland. Weary and thirsty
from sightseeing, the American found a dirty little "pub–
lic house" which looked far from inviting. He entered,
hesitatingly, to confront a genial bartender. The latter's
expression somehow reminded him of home.
"I suppose you couldn't make me a cocktail," sug–
gested the visitor.
"Sure, I can, sir. And what kind, sir?"
Flynn thought he would give him something out of
the other's ken.
"Make it a Clover Club," he said. And after certain
familiar rites, the barman set down before him a Clover
Club that, except that it betrayed lack of ice in the
making, was perfect in content.
"Where the deuce did you ever learn to make a drink
like that?" the newspaper man inquired.
"Why, sir," said the barman, "where else but at the
Waldorf? Meself was a barman there for several years."
SOLON AT THE BAR
During the greater part of its existence, the most pop–
ular professor in Bar One of the American School of
Drinking was "Johnnie" Solon. Johnnie helped close the
Bar when prohibition descended. He had come to it soon
after the Spanish-American War, in which he served as
a volunteer. Like certain others of the most famous bar-