Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1881 — A Tramp and His Drink. [ARTICLE]

A Tramp and His Drink.

A dilapidated-looking tramp, with sixteen distinct patches on his clothes, and a plaster over his eye, went into a saloon, slapped down a worn-out dime and bawled out in a voice loud enough to be heard in Ogden: “ Give me a soda-water cocktail with the North pole in it.” A crowd outside, thinking free drinks were to be set up, crowded into the saloon and watched and waited. The man of rags, who had ordered the North Eole in his drink, ate up all the lunch e could find, chewed up the coffee and cloves, and was tackling the mint, when the bartender quietly asked: “ What did you say you want in your drink, Mr. Gould?” Mr. Gould steadied himself a moment, grinned on the crowd and at himself in the looking-glass, and replied: “ H you please, sir, I’ll have the North pole in it. ” The bartender remembered an old {>iece of gas-tubing, about three feet in ength, had been left around; he got it and blew some cayenne pepper down the inside, put one end of it in the cocktail, and smilingly handed it to Mr. Gould. Mr. Gould took it, gave a first preliminary pull, and then a hurricane arose. It seemed as though the combined tornadoes of eight Eastern States had broken loose. An immense conglomeration of legs, arms, hats, canes and bodies was observed piling out of the saloon a few moments after; and to-day, when the saloonkeeper reckons up the losses of a broken head, cracked mirror, scratched and stained counter, and liability of being sued, he will sadly remember the last words of the tramp as he closed the door and shot up the street.— Salt Lake Tribune. The Hotel reports an interview with an old waiter, in which he makes the statement that “waiters seldom grow old. As a rule, they’re sassy until they’re 28. They begin to be weak when they touch 30, and at 40 they are but little good, as indigestion kills them.”