... Wealth of sensation and freedom of fancy, which make
an extraordinary ferment in his ignorant heart, presently bubble
over into some kind of utterance."
[Illustration]
FULTON STREET, AND WALT WHITMAN
At the suggestion of Mr. Christopher Clarke, the Three Hours for
Lunch Club made pilgrimage to the old seafaring tavern at No. 2
Fulton Street, and found it to be a heavenly place, with listing
brass-shod black walnut stairs and the equally black and delightful
waiter called Oliver, who (said Mr. Clarke) has been there since
1878.
But the club reports that the swordfish steak, of which it partook
as per Mr. Clarke's suggestion, did not appeal so strongly to its
taste. Swordfish steak, we feel, is probably a taste acquired by
long and diligent application. At the first trial it seemed to the
club a bit too reptilian in flavour. The club will go there again,
and will hope to arrive in time to grab one of those tables by the
windows, looking out over the docks and the United Fruit Company
steamer which is so appropriately named the _Banan_; but it is the
sense of the meeting that swordfish steak is not in its line.
The club retorts to Mr. Clarke by asking him if he knows the
downtown chophouse where one may climb sawdusted stairs and sit in a
corner beside a framed copy of the _New-York Daily Gazette_ of May
1, 1789, at a little table incised with the initials of former
habitues, and hold up toward the light a glass of the clearest and
most golden and amberlucent cider known to mankind, and before
attacking a platter of cold ham and Boston beans, may feel that
smiling sensation of a man about to make gradual and decent advances
toward a ripe and ruddy appetite.
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