Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

XX—Continuing the History of the Rum Demon—the Barroom and Manners

XX—Continuing the History of the Rum Demon—the Barroom and Manners

Another thing about those barrooms that has been vanished forever is the fact that most of them was right polite sort of places if a fellow edged up to the bar and knocked over your glass of whiskey or something like that he would say, O excuse me stranger and you would say sure, but look where in hell you are going to after this.

Sure he would say no offence meant. No offence taken you would say to him. Have one with me he would say.

No sooner said than done.

But nowadays all you see and hear is bad manners and impoliteness with people hustling and bumping into each other on the subways and stepping on each other and women and children amongst them and nobody ever begging anybody's pardon and hard feelings everywhere.

The trouble is everybody is sore and wanting a drink all the time and there is no place where the younger generation is going to learn good manners now that the barrooms is gone. What is the young fellows just growing up to manhood going to do for their manners now that the barrooms is closed, is what I want to know.

It used to be you would get onto a subway train and there would be two or three women standing up and you would be setting down and there would be three or four drinks under your belt and you would be feeling good and you would say to yourself am I a gentleman or ain't I a gentleman.

You're damned right I am a gentleman, you would say to yourself, here, lady, you set down, and don't let any of these here bums roust you out of that seat.

If any of these here bums tries to roust you out of that seat I will put a tin ear onto them.

That's the kind of a gentleman I am, lady, they would have a hell of a time, lady, getting your seat away from you with me here.

And she seen you was a gentleman and she smiled at you and you hung onto a strap and felt good.

But nowadays there ain't no manners, with no place to get a drink or anything.

You are setting in the subway and a lady comes in and has nowheres to set, and you say to yourself let some of these other guys get up and give her a seat.

And you think a while and you say to yourself I'll bet she is a Prohibitionist anyhow. Let her stand up. She has got to learn you can't have any manners with the barrooms all closed and everything.

Well, that's another thing closing the barroom has done. It has took away all the manners this town ever had.

In my next chapter I will get down to brass tacks and tell just what those barrooms was like for the benefit of future posterity that has never seen one.

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