I must confess to an irrational affection for quaint eating places, and having explored downtown New York's crowded cafés and lunchrooms rather carefully in quest of a congenial tavern, the Commutation Chophouse struck me as highly original and pleasing. We stepped down into a very large and rather dark cellar that apparently had previously been used as a carpenter's shop, for a good many traces of the earlier tenancy were still visible. The furnishings were of the plainest, consisting simply of heavy wooden tables and benches. There was no linen on the tables, but the wood had been scrubbed scrupulously clean and there were piles of tissue napkins. From a door at the back waiters came rushing with trays of food. A glorious clatter of knives and forks filled the air, and it looked at first as though we would find no place to sit. As Dove expressed it, the room was loaded to the muzzle; and a continuous stream of patrons was coming down the alley, allured by the sandwich man and the absurd thin gayety of the fiddle. By the front door stood a dark young man, behind a small counter, selling tickets.
“One meal for a dollar,” he cried, repeatedly, as he took in money. “One hundred meals for ten dollars. Get your commutation tickets here.”
“We'll try two single meals to begin with,” I said, and put down a ten-dollar bill.
The young man rummaged in a drawer full of greasy notes to get the change. “Better get a commutation,” he said. “Tremendous saving.”
“I should think you'd need a cash register,” said Dulcet. “Handling all that kale, it would be useful in keeping the accounts straight.”
The young man looked up sharply.
“Say,” he retorted, “what are you, mister? Cash-register salesman? Step along please, don't block the gangway. Next! Seats in the rear! No, commutation tickets not transferable. Good only to the purchaser. Ten dollars, please. Next!”
“They seem to be coining money,” said Dove, as we found places at last in a rear corner.
“Well,” I said, “this is just the kind of place I like. By Jove, this building must be well over a hundred years old. Look at those beams in the ceiling. All they need is a few sporting prints and an open fireplace. Lit by candles, too, you see. Well, well, this is the real alehouse atmosphere. Why, it's as good as the Cheshire Cheese. This is the kind of place where I can imagine Doctor Johnson and Charles Lamb sitting in a corner.”
“You are an incurable sentimentalist,” he said. “Besides, Lamb would have had to sit on Johnson's knee, I expect. If I remember rightly, Lamb was a very small urchin when Doctor Johnson died.”