“About as large as a full grown turkey” was the grave reply.
“O, I’ll take an oyster stew,” said the lady, quickly.
The fashionable restaurants make large profits on their sales. Their customers are chiefly ladies, and men who have nothing to do. Their busiest hours are the early afternoon, and during the evening. After the theatres are closed, they are thronged with parties of ladies and gentlemen who come in for supper.
Some of the best restaurants in the city are those in which a lady is never seen. It must not be supposed that they are disreputable places. They are entirely the opposite. They are located in the lower part of the city, often in some by-street of the heavy business section, and are patronized chiefly by merchants and clerks, who come here to get lunch and dinner. The fare is excellent, and the prices are reasonable. The eating houses of Henry Bode, in Water street, near Wall street, Rudolph in Broadway, near Courtlandt street, and Nash & Fuller (late Crook, Fox & Nash), in Park Row, are the best of this kind. In the last there is a department for ladies.
Between the hours of noon and three o’clock, the down-town restaurants are generally crowded with a hungry throng. In some of them every seat at the long counters and at the tables is filled, and the floor is crowded with men standing and eating from plates which they hold in their hands. The noise, the
bustle, the clatter of knives and dishes, the slamming of doors, and the cries of the waiters as they shout out the orders of the guests, are deafening. The waiters move about with a celerity that is astonishing; food is served and eaten with a dispatch peculiar to these places. A constant stream of men is pouring out of the doors, and as steady a stream flowing in to take their places. At some of the largest of these establishments as many as fifteen hundred people are supplied with food during the course of the day. A well patronized restaurant is very profitable in New York, even if its prices are moderate, and the higher priced establishments make their proprietors rich in a comparatively short time. The proprietor of a Broadway oyster saloon made a fortune of $150,000 by his legitimate business in five years. A large part of the income of the restaurants is derived from the sale of liquors at the bar.
The principal up-town restaurants are largely patronized by disreputable people. Impure women go there to pick up custom, and men to find such companions. Women whose social position is good, do not hesitate to meet their lovers at such places, for there is a great deal of truth in the old adage which tells us that “there’s no place so private as a crowded hall.” A quiet but close observer will frequently see a nod, or a smile, or a meaning glance pass between the most respectable looking persons of opposite sexes, who are seemingly strangers to each other, and will sometimes see a note slyly sent by a waiter, or dropped adroitly into the hand of the woman as the man passes out, while her face wears the demurest and most rigidly virtuous expression. Such women frequent some of the best known up-town establishments to so great an extent that a lady entering one of them is apt to be insulted in this way by the male habitués of the place. These wretches hold all women to be alike, and act upon this belief.
XL. THE CHEAP LODGING-HOUSES.
The Bowery and the eastern section of the city are full of cheap lodging-houses, which are a grade lower than the lowest hotels, and several grades above the cellars. One or two of these are immense establishments, five and six stories in height. Some of them provide their lodgers with beds and covering, others supply pallets laid down on the floor of a cheerless room, and others again give merely the pallets and no sheets or coverings. The rooms, the beds, and the bedding in all these establishments are horribly dirty, and are badly ventilated. Bed bugs abound in the summer, and in the winter the lodger is nearly frozen, the covering, when furnished, being utterly inadequate to the task of keeping out the cold. From six to ten persons are put in a room together. The price varies from ten to twenty-five cents, according to the accommodations furnished. Each of these houses is provided with a bar, at which the vilest liquors are sold at ten cents a drink. The profits of the business are very great, not counting the receipts of the bar, which are in proportion. The expense of fitting up and conducting such an establishment is trifling. One of them accommodates nearly two hundred lodgers per night, which at ten cents per head, would be a net receipt of twenty dollars.
The persons who patronize these establishments are mainly vagrants, men who live from hand to mouth, and who will not be received by the humblest boarding-house. Some are doubtless unfortunate, but the majority are vagrants from choice. Some have irregular occupations, others get the price of their lodgings by begging.