THE BRITISH BEER SHOP.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 69, 21 March 1877, Page 4

THE BRITISH BEER SHOP.

{Atlantic Monthly.) The British Beer-shop ia a manifold, a mighty, a terrible, a pathetic phenomenon. . Go .where you will in England, but particularly in the larger and moreprosperoua cities, this hydra every now and then thrusts up one of its countless heads before you, all so familiar in features that you can hurdly distinguish between one and another, with 9. result that you are impressed at last with a fearful sense of multitude, of inescapable power, and of a power which is evil, . There is nothing terrifying in the staring sign, the great gleaming windows, and other recognisable characteristics of a single London or Liverpool drinking saloon. Tired, perhaps, with sight seeing, you are 'rather pleased to find such a haven in your way, and you rash in' gladly to revive your forces with a draught of pale ale or porter. But after you have seen a thousand; after you have seen ten thousand, all more or less alike in all gushing from morn to midnight with malt liquors and fiery ardent spirits, all frequented and often crowded by drinking men and women, and t even infants, you begin to feel a sentiment of doubt and distrust which is capable of rising to something like terror. It seems to the imagination as if some immeasurable beast underlay all England, shooting op through the crust of the island innumerable glittering and drooling muzzles, all eager to poison and devour. You wonder how long rbe sturdy human breed here established can withstand this incessant hunger of a measureless monster. If you do not wish that there were no beer-ahops at all, you do perhaps come to desire that there might be fewer. While they are many, they are little, these gin-palaces, or whatever one chooses to call them; at least they seem small to an American by comparison with the continental bar-rooms which he can find in his native land. Exteriorly, there is often a notable splendour of vast windows, sometimes of gilding, and by night of abundant gaa. Bat you enter, and the scene changes; the varnish and other embellishments have become soiled by hard, low, use; the floors are either muddy or gritty, and scored with the tramping of numberless customers; the seats, if there be any, show the robbing and grime of much dirty clothing. Over all .the place there is a rude, uncompromising look of plain business, paying a high rent, and figuring close for profits. Few are the decorative decanters, and numerous (he work-a-Jay junk bottles in their runty green or black. In many cases also, the after part of the room exhibits vast mounds of barrels and hogsheads, as if some Joseph bad laid up some granaries of ale and whisky against a coming septtnnat of droughty years. Usually a beei-dhop bus two or three massive thudding, doors, secured from slamming by straps; and each one of them is tabled in large, distinct letters, to indicate a special style of customers. At the very least there is a " public entrance," and a "jug and bottle entrance," sometimes this last is styled the " Private entrance" or, in rakish irony, as it would seem, the • * family entrance." To correspond with these doore the room within is divided into compartments by high oaken or mahogany partitions, which run from the wall to the bar. Behind the bar stand the servitors, sometimes men, but very often women, and these mostly young women. The traveller is tempted at times to declare that all the pretty girls in Eogland are picked out for barmaids and ebopgirlß. I ventured to enquire of oue of these buxom Hebes what were her hours of labor. She told me that she was at her post from nine in the morning until eleven at night; that she bad an hour's nooning, one day out every fortnight, and the whole of Sunday until eix, afternoon. She was a strong, solid, fair-faced girl of twenty, with some color in her cheeks, the cool-lighted English blue eye, and hair of straight chestnut. Beside her toiled a comrade who was evidently her sister; also a woman of thirty, who seemed to be the lady superior of the establishment; also a young man of twenty-five. They all had a brisk, business-like, overworked seriousness, unlighted by juvenile gaiety or flirtisbnes?.