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slug was four ounces, the cuspidors in the Astor House might
:reasonably be confused with umbrella stands, and the business of
agitating the liver and stirring the senses into function began early
in the day.
Gentlefolk often drank a brandy sling heavily laced with
Stoughton's Bitters
1
a notable cure-all of the times, before descend–
ing .to· breakfast. Hardier
if
less elegant souls had a slug of rock
and rye while shaving and brushed their teeth in a light Moselle.
The square hat compartment which was part of every man's chif–
fonier of the period was often as not devoted, not to father's best
gray topper from Yourmans, but to a .bottle of Lawrence's Medford
Rum, a chummy bedroom companion and an aid in tying the com–
plicated stocks and Ascots then in sartorial favor.
During the ride downtown the pre-breakfast restorative, no
matter how liberally applied, tended to die on the captains of finance
and
ind~stry
and a few of the less sensitive of that valiant genera–
tion paused at spas previously ascertained and charted near Canal
Street before continuing to the shadow of Grace Church, but this
was frowned on by the conservative or
J.
P.
Morgan element which
maintained that a man should be able to read his own mail, at least'
the first delivery, unaided by the office staff.
One skirmish with the stock ticker, however, and a
~hiff
of what
I
Jay Gould was doing in the gold market usually set even the Morgan
partners to reaching for their hats and telling the receptionist they
were just going across the street to the Subtreasury for a few minutes.
They invariably returned from the Subtreasury eating a clove.
This practice, mark you, of midmorning refreshment originally
carried with it no least suggestion of relinquished moral control or
<lecline in individual deportment. It was as commonly accepted and
respe~tahle
a ritual at the period of which we write as is the high
noon s·our or a restorative milk punch today and had about it no
18: Stork Club Bar Book