poster from the Dave Thomson collection |
In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor,
the banker, the chief desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon-keeper,
occupied the same level in society, and it was the highest. The cheapest
and easiest way to become an influential man and be looked up to by the
community at large, was to stand behind a bar, wear a cluster-diamond pin,
and sell whisky. I am not sure but that the saloon-keeper held a shade higher
rank than any other member of society. His opinion had weight. It was his
privilege to say how the elections should go. No great movement could succeed
without the countenance and direction of the saloon-keepers. It was a high
favor when the chief saloon-keeper consented to serve in the legislature
or the board of aldermen. Youthful ambition hardly aspired so much to the
honors of the law, or the army and navy as to the dignity of proprietorship
in a saloon. To be a saloon-keeper and kill a man was to be illustrious.
- Roughing It |
| Then everybody traveled by steamboat, everybody
drank, and everybody treated everybody else. "Now most everybody goes
by railroad, and the rest don't drink." In the old times the barkeeper
owned the bar himself, "and was gay and smarty and talky and all jeweled
up, and was the toniest aristocrat on the boat; used to make $2,000 on a
trip. A father who left his son a steamboat bar, left him a fortune. Now
he leaves him board and lodging; yes, and washing, if a shirt a trip will
do. Yes, indeedy, times are changed. Why, do you know, on the principal
line of boats on the Upper Mississippi, they don't have any bar at all!
Sounds like poetry, but it's the petrified truth." - Life on the Mississippi |
 Illustration from first edition of LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI |
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