1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

Bar Patterns Two famous characters who patronized the Bar for many years, day after day, would remain until curfew hour. They were known to the crowd only as "Harry" and "Sherry." They would come in together and take a position at one corner of the counter and one would order the drinks. While these were being consumed, Harry and Sherry would stand with 'their heads close together, talking in whispers. The first drink dis– patched, both would move a step 'onward, and from that coign of vantage order a second round, meantime continuing the whispering. This' progression would keep on, step by step, until the bar closed; by which hour t.hey would have reached the point from which they started. The friendship of Harry and Sherry and their peculiar rite survived at least until the Bar was put out of busi– ness by prohibition. The two men were said to be artists. One died some years ago. The other, now looking more than four score, was seen in the lobby of the_old hotel not long before it closed. Louis Dery, for years a cashier in the Bar and later the hotel's Credit Manager, watched him pause at the portal through which, for so many years, he had passed to spirituous exaltation. The famous altar of Bacchus, over which he had poured so many libations and spent with his friend so much time and money, had long disappeared and its site had been claimed by a humidor. The old man looked long at the spot where had stood the corner from which he and his chum had begun their daily circuits. Then he sighed, shook his head and tottered hurriedly out of the hotel as if he were fleeing from ghosts. [ 53]