Barmaiden

And here in this snug little Inn, I exclaimed, / With a barmaiden knowing, and pretty, and sly; / Who to love and confess it would not be ashamed, / How blest could I live, how reluctantly die.

Anything less like the flashy-dressed bar-maidens of the western gin palaces it would be difficult to imagine.

There being no appearance of wind, we passed the night at Port Chalmers—that semi-amphibious town, whose inhabitants seem to consist chiefly of sailors, shipchandlers, boatmen, barmen, and barmaidens, and an eccentric barber, who has, quite naturally, transferred his services from Greenwich to Port Chalmers.

It is all clean forgotten: machinery in motion, fine arts galleries, foreign commissioners and their squabbles, the Russian village, the Prussian gun, Spiers and Pond’s blonde bar-maidens, the Chinese theatre, the Imperial kiosque, and the American cream-soda saloon.

“Excellent!” I answered, “finest in the world; take half a page?” “Well, I don’t mind if I do,” he said, and he handed his glass to the nearest barmaiden.

Under the heading of “Betsy at the Bar.—A Story of ‘Shouting’ at Charleston,” the Nelson Colonist says:—And the barmaiden whispered ’twere better by far, to make flats pay for champagne who bet at the bar.

Go to dinner in Refreshment Room. Brilliant Barmaiden standing out against a background of brilliant and variegated bottles, like what a fancy chemist’s shop might be.

Country visitors to the Agricultural-hall seem chronically hungry, while the town visitors are distinguished, on the contrary, by their addiction to the fluids dispensed by the wondrous barmaidens of Messrs. Spiers and Pond.