Every now and then, while the hot
sun smote the awnings outside, there would be another china mug of
that one-half-of-1-per-cent. ale, which seems to us very good. We
repeat: we don't care so much what we drink as the surroundings
among which we drink it. We are not, if you will permit the phrase,
sot in our ways. We like the spirit of McSorley's, which is decent,
dignified, and refined. No club has an etiquette more properly
self-respecting.
One does not go to McSorley's without a glimpse at that curious old
red pile Bible House. It happened this way: Our friend Endymion was
back from his vacation and we were trying to celebrate it in modest
fashion. We were telling him all the things that had happened since
he went away--that Bob Holliday had had a fortieth birthday, and
Frank Shay had published his bibliography of Walt Whitman, and all
that sort of thing; and in our mutual excitement Endymion whisked
too swiftly round a corner and caught his jacket on a sharp
door-latch and tore it. Inquiring at Astor Place's biggest
department store as to where we could get it mended, they told us to
go to "Mr. Wright the weaver" on the sixth floor of Bible House, and
we did so. On our way back, avoiding the ancient wire rope elevator
(we know only one other lift so delightfully mid-Victorian, viz.,
one in Boston, that takes you upstairs to see Edwin Edgett, the
gentle-hearted literary editor of the Boston _Transcript_), we
walked down the stairs, peeping into doorways in great curiosity.
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