The American bar-keeper is quite an institution of himself. He is a superior class of man to those engaged in a similar capacity in this country, and has no counterpart here. In fact, bar-keeping is a profession, in which individuals rise to eminence, and become celebrated for their cocktails, and for their address in serving customers. The rapidity and dexterity with which they mix half-a-dozen different kinds of drinks all at once is perfectly wonderful; one sees nothing but a confusion of bottles and tumblers and cascades of fluids as he pours them from glass to glass at arm’s length for the better amalgamation of the ingredients; and in the time it would take an ordinary man to pour out a glass of wine, the mixtures are ready, each prepared as accurately as an apothecary makes up a prescription.
The bar-keepers in San Francisco exercised their ingenuity in devising new drinks to suit the popular taste. The most simple and the best that I know of is a champagne cocktail, which is very easily made by putting a few drops of bitters in a tumbler and filling it up with champagne.
The immigration of Frenchmen had been so large that some parts of the city were completely French in appearance; the shops, restaurants, and estaminets, being painted according to French taste, and exhibiting French signs, the very letters of which had a French look about them. The names of some of the restaurants were rather ambitious—as the Trois Frères, the Café de Paris, and suchlike; but these were second and third-rate places; those which courted the patronage of the upper classes of all nations, assumed names more calculated to tickle the American ear,—such as the Jackson House and the Lafayette. They were presided over by elegantly dressed dames du comptoir, and all the arrangements were in Parisian style.
The principal American houses were equally good; and there was also an abundance of places where those who delighted in corn-bread, buckwheat cakes, pickles, grease, molasses, apple-sauce, and pumpkin pie, could gratify their taste to the fullest extent.
There was nothing particularly English about any of the eating-houses; but there were numbers of second-rate English drinking-shops, where John Bull could smoke his pipe and swig his ale coolly and calmly, without having to gulp it down and move off to make way for others, as at the bars of the American saloons.
The Germans too had their lager-beer cellars, but the noise and smoke which came up from them was enough to deter any one but a German from venturing in.
There was also a Mexican quarter of the town, where there were greasy-looking Mexican fondas, and crowds of lazy Mexicans lying about, wrapped up in their blankets, smoking cigaritas.
In another quarter the Chinese most did congregate. Here the majority of the houses were of Chinese importation, and were stores, stocked with hams, tea, dried fish, dried ducks, and other very nasty-looking Chinese eatables, besides copper pots and kettles, fans, shawls, chessmen, and all sorts of curiosities. Suspended over the doors were brilliantly colored boards, about the size and shape of a headboard over a grave, covered with Chinese characters, and with several yards of red ribbon streaming from them; while the streets were thronged with long-tailed Celestials, chattering vociferously as they rushed about from store to store, or standing in groups studying the Chinese bills posted up in the shop windows, which may have been play-bills,—for there was a Chinese theatre,—or perhaps advertisements informing the public where the best rat-pies were to be had. A peculiarly nasty smell pervaded this locality, and it was generally believed that rats were not so numerous here as elsewhere.
Owing to the great scarcity of washerwomen, Chinese energy had ample room to display itself in the washing and ironing business. Throughout the town might be seen occasionally over some small house a large American sign, intimating that Ching Sing, Wong Choo, or Ki-chong did washing and ironing at five dollars a-dozen. Inside these places one found two or three Chinamen ironing shirts with large flat-bottomed copper pots full of burning charcoal, and, buried in heaps of dirty clothes, half-a-dozen more, smoking, and drinking tea.
The Chinese tried to keep pace with the rest of the world. They had their theatre and their gambling rooms, the latter being small dirty places, badly lighted with Chinese paper lamps. They played a peculiar game. The dealer placed on the table several handfuls of small copper coins, with square holes in them. Bets were made by placing the stake on one of four divisions, marked in the middle of the table, and the dealer, drawing the coins away from the heap, four at a time, the bets were decided according to whether one, two, three, or four remained at the last. They are great gamblers, and, when their last dollar is gone, will stake anything they possess: numbers of watches, rings, and such articles, were always lying in pawn on the table.