“It’s no business of mine to inquire what they are doing; they have been there ever since dinner.”
“Then they must leave soon, and we may have the room.”
“I don’t think they will,” rejoined the bar-keeper. “Whenever they come to dine, they generally stay for breakfast.”
“And the room adjoining?”
“Is already engaged. I expect the gentlemen every minute.”
The party cast an inquiring look at one another, and then gathered round a small table as well as they could, quietly awaiting the arrival of the supper.
In less than fifteen minutes from this time, it being nearly twelve o’clock, the whole room was filled to overflowing with the most motley assemblage of persons I ever beheld in my life. It was a group worthy of being preserved on canvass. Besides the party already mentioned, there were gathered round the chimney a parcel of Kentuckians, a giant race of men, full of strange oaths and tobacco-juice, discussing politics, and betting heavily on the issue of certain matters then under debate. Their language, surely, was not altogether intelligible to me; but what I did understand convinced me that they are justly reputed for their wit and humour. One of them—standing, I should judge, six feet two—was a good-natured punster, who, in spite of the serious turn their conversation had taken, kept the company in a continual roar of laughter.
Round the bar was stationed a more noisy and less original set of men; such as a person might see in any of the larger gin-shops of London on a Saturday evening. They were vulgar and “uproarious,” smoked bad cigars and spit promiscuously round the room, while the Kentuckians showed their better breeding by always hitting the same spot. A third party, evidently composed of young bucks, dressed in the latest London fashions, with perfumed hair and real French kid gloves, were discussing the merits of women; which they did con amore, using all the English slang they had collected from the newspapers, or from fashionable novels, and taking great pains to appear as outlandish as possible. The intervals between these clusters were filled up with single gentlemen, of all ages and descriptions, and in every possible state of consciousness,—from that of a perfect knowledge of “the thousand natural shocks this flesh is heir to,” to that of the most total oblivion, and triumph “o’er a’ the ills o’ life.”
What gave a peculiar character to this little pandemonium was the continual apparition and vanishing of the black, brown, and yellow waiters; all shining with perspiration, and leaving, as they passed, something not altogether unlike the odour of brimstone behind them. These exhalations, the steam of the viands, the smell of rum, brandy, and tobacco, independent of the corrupt, sultry air produced by the presence of a large number of persons in a small room, soon obliged me to quit the scene of merriment; and, in half an hour later, I found myself safely in bed at Gadsby’s.