Your only comfort
lay in the forced reflection, that, real as he looked, the poor
caitiff was but imaginary, a bit of painted canvass, whom no delirium
tremens, nor so much as a retributive headache, awaited, on the
morrow.
By this time, it being past eleven o'clock, the two bar-keepers of
the saloon were in pretty constant activity. One of these young men
had a rare faculty in the concoction of gin-cocktails. It was a
spectacle to behold, how, with a tumbler in each hand, he tossed the
contents from one to the other. Never conveying it awry, nor
spilling the least drop, he compelled the frothy liquor, as it seemed
to me, to spout forth from one glass and descend into the other, in a
great parabolic curve, as well-defined and calculable as a planet's
orbit. He had a good forehead, with a particularly large development
just above the eyebrows; fine intellectual gifts, no doubt, which he
had educated to this profitable end; being famous for nothing but
gin-cocktails, and commanding a fair salary by his one accomplishment.
These cocktails, and other artificial combinations of liquor, (of
which there were at least a score, though mostly, I suspect,
fantastic in their differences,) were much in favor with the younger
class of customers, who, at farthest, had only reached the second
stage of potatory life. The staunch, old soakers, on the other hand
men who, if put on tap, would have yielded a red alcoholic liquor, by
way of blood usually confined themselves to plain brandy-and-water,
gin, or West India rum; and, oftentimes, they prefaced their dram
with some medicinal remark as to the wholesomeness and stomachic
qualities of that particular drink.
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