1935 Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book

HISTORICAL 157 a good-sized bronze bear, looking as if it meant business; at the other end, a rampant bull. Midway between them was placed a tiny lamb, flanked on either side by a tall vase of flowers. The whole decoration was a more or less delicate compliment to the heaviest patronage of the room at cocktail-time, wags claiming that the ·flowers were all the lamb-the innocent public-got after Wall Street's bulls and bears had finished with him. To name the impqrtant figures that were to be seen at various times in that Barroom during its first fifteen or twenty years would be like setting down most of the names from various editions of Who's Who in America-except– ing, of course, always preachers-and including a good– sized list taken from the British Who's Who and the Al– manach de Gotha. As a gathering place for celebrities, the room was one of the real sights of New York. But in recollection, one cannot stop to assign faces to a partic– ular period. There is too nearly a sea of them. While Colonel William F. Cody-"Buffalo Bill"-clung to the old Hoffman House as long as his friend, Ed. Stokes, was its proprietor, he used to drop into the Wal– dorf Bar, and there one might discove.r him at a table surrounded by a lot of admirers. Cody, with his wide-brimmed hat, long mustache and goatee, and in the old days wearing a Prince Albert coat, presented a handsome figure and one which eyes seldom failed to follow. Men liked to invite Colonel Cody to "have one" with them, and it is not on record that he ever refused. In ac– cepting such an invitation, he followed an invariable formula. "Sir," he would respond heartily, "you speak the Ian-