Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1883 — Old London Taverns. [ARTICLE]

Old London Taverns.

If coziness is needed as a condition under which authors gain most inspiration, such an abundance of that luxury has been bestowed upon them, in one direction, ever since the time of Shakspeare, that, whatever hardships they may have endured in private life, they have had little cause to complain of their public “entertainment.” So closely, indeed, have the old coffeehouses, inns, and taverns in London become associated with the names of men of letters, so endless are the anecdotes told of these eccentric people, of their sayings and doings, their witticisms and their epigrams, which have reached us from these snug retreats, that no biography of a literary man of any note who has lived any time during the last 300 years, would be complete without some reference to intore than one old city tavern. They were the “houses of iold” for those who had a fund of learning, and were eager to exchange ideas. The surroundings were eminently characteristic of men who placed erudition before every othef “circumstance” by which our lives are governed. Here they could “feast” over each other’s words, and serve them up rechauffe with a bowl of punch. The floors were sanded, the pipes were of clay, and the seats were wooden high-backed benches. This may not be the modern notion of comfort; but to men so conservative by natfire, a warm room and (a curtained compartment, where Shakspeare and Ben Johnson had sat in seats of honor, was an ample compensation for the absence of showiness and ease; and the gloom and mystery of the courts and alleys in which these old taverns were invariably found, was perhaps the secret of their attraction, to men of a thoughtful and retiring disposition. New faces were seldom seen; it was a sort of club life, in which the choice «f companionship was made in the manner naturally adopted by “birds of a feather,” flocking in taverns, as in trees. ' Numerous burglaries go undetected in Sing Sing, N. Y., and the Detroit jFree Press moralizes: The man who swims where sharks are in the habit of (swimming, the mouse which jumps ppdn the cat’s back are supposed to be types of recklessness and pluck. But (the burglar who plies his trade in a State’s prison evidently doesn’t think himself in danger on that account. An Arabic manuscript, dating from the latter half of the fourteenth century (1365), conveys the curious information that the merchant vessels tradpig at that time in the Indian ocean carried four divers, whose duties were solely to discover and stop leaks in the hull of the craft below the water line. Bound of the trickling water indicated the points of danger. They most enjoy the world who least tdmire.— Young.