Buffets (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Buffets The Wouter Van Twiller Club, of the State of New York and the County and City of New York, to give the full name as ft appeared in the act of incorporation, occupied a building on Broadway at the time of which I write. A great, full-length portrait of the doughty Dutch governor took up nearly the whole of one end of the library, - a pleasant room enough, but frequented only by a few old fellows, because it was the only place in the house where the rules forbade smoking. The library was well appointed, but was furnished in a style rather suggestive of knee-breeches and pigtails, - too old-fashioned for the tastes of the young men, who, it must be confessed, preferred the fascinations of the card-rooms, or loved better to exercise their biceps in the billiard-rooms upstairs, which were sure to be lively, and hazy with tobacco-smoke at certain hours, varying a little according to the season. The club was made up of men who had money, and moved in good society, and blackballs were used freely at the monthly meetings. It was computed by a man with a mathematical head, who by some strange freak of fortune had been admitted, that the incomes of the ten leading members were equal in amount to that of Mr. William B. Astor. This is open to doubt, notwithstanding the proverbial veracity of figures , but it is beyond question that the club numbered some heavy men on its rolls, although, being members of other and still more exclusive corporations, they seldom appeared, and so gave the young men the lull swing of the place. The name Wouter Van Twiller, although rather imposing in print, on a seal, and at the head of note-paper, was quite too long for ordinary use among these lazy young fellows, and so, by a very natural transition, it came to" be "Twiddler." All the members, even to the oldest and most dignified, called themselves, and were called by their friends outside, "Twiddlers." The Twiddlers were, as a whole, judges of good wine, and the cellars of the club were well filled. Every man knew a good cigar from a bad one, and the steward imported the genuine product of the Vuelta d' Abajo direct from Cuba. Men, moderately rich, could afford to smoke good cigars in those days , and the price at which the Twiddlers obtained their Cabanas and their Figaros would in these times of duties and taxes seem absurdly low. One consequence was that the young Twiddlers smoked rather more than was good for them , and being in general sons of rich fathers, or' having other ways of obtain- About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.