1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

FOREWORD A GENERATION HAS g;;own up among us whose philoso– phy of life is not that of twenty years ago. It calls itself sophisticated. Perhaps it has reason. This is a complex age. Civilization has become complex andoften it seems ouryoung people are sujferingfrom some sort of complex, ~fit is only that of "superiority." But some of us like occasionally to dwell on the past, to recall simpler days when nothing was complex and there was no talk of"complexes"; days when drinking was often an honored social custom among gentlemen, and when the man who indulged enjoyed thefull protectio'f!. ofgovernment, and did not thus necessarily render himself, in effect, an enemy of law and order. Those days are past. Some say that in this country they will never return. This is no prophecy or argument. But twenty years ago, over almost every thirsty lip in all parts of the world where English was spoken, had passed the name of one place of refreshment which in many ways -