1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

Hall ofFame Almost anybody familiar with newspaper pictures would recognize the face of at least one of two white– mustached men who, on rare occasions, might be seen there, in company. He was no less a personage than Mark Twain, the humorist; and yes, that extremely well groomed man with him was H. H. Rogers, of the Stand– ard Oil Company, who became, in the humorist's later years, perhaps his closest intimate. Perhaps they had just stopped in to "pass the time of day" with a friend or two. Over there at the bar-side might be pointed out Peter Fenelon Collier, an Irishman, who, coming to America poor many years before, had founded a great publishing house and a magazine, and had bohght himself a big castle in his native country. His son and successor, Robert Collier, was frequently seen in that room. Before he became Vice-President of the United States, United States Senator Charles Warren Fairbanks, of In– diana, was occasionally discovered among the crowd of notabilities in the Bar. Senator Fairbanks, while perhaps not what might be described as picturesque, invariably attracted attention wherever he appeared, even in a crowd which was apt to contain so many, individualistic and striking, or decorative varieties of men or costume. A tall, thin man he was, with curious chin-whiskers and an expression of supernatural gravity that frequently led strangers to mistake him for an undertaker. Being so tall, it is not odd that he should have been ignorant of what was lying at his feet one night, not in the Bar, but in Peacock Alley. Evidently, George C. Boldt, the hotel's proprietor, who was talking with him at the time, had relaxed his usual vigilance. [ 27]