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156
OLD WALDORF-ASTORIA BAR BOOK.
-not necessarily spent before an attack upon the lunch
table-served to keep them in good standing. By such an
outlay as little as three times a week, a man could eat daily
from that hospitable offering a luncheon that, served in
one of the hotel's restaurants, would have set him back a
good two dollars-and get away with it. And many so dici.
The table in the Waldorf-Astoria Bar cost the hotel more
than seventy-five hundred dollars a year. It proved excel–
lent advertisement, for no inconsiderable slice of the
hotel's profits came from the sale of wines and liquors.
Service was rendered with a distinction many establish–
ments of a similar nature lacked. For example, in its early
days, a small, snowy napkin went with each drink, enabling
a patron to remove certain traces from his mustache or his
whiskers-heavy mustaches and whiskers were abundant–
without toting home odors in his hip pocket, or wherever
he carried his handkerchief. And while questions were not
usually asked, men who bought drinks were supposed to be
able to freight them away intact, and not to spill them,
or to show other effects than a certain mellowness and
good fellowship-though perhaps fl:µency in argument or
reminiscence might be forgiven one who was standing
treat.
In
brief, a gentleman was supposed to
be
lar~
than
what he drank. The theory of the proprietor of the estab–
lishment was that all his patrons were gentlemen. And the
theory was good, even if it didn't always work out in
practiGe.
The actual bar itself, a large, rectangular counter at the
northeast corner of the room, as noted, had a brass rail
running alL around its foot. In its center was a long re–
frigerator topped by a snowy cloth and an orderly arrange–
ment of drinking glasses. At one end of this cover stood