There is a certain sort of life-whether it is worth seeing is a question that we can see nowhere else, and for an hour Mr. Glow and King and Forbes, sipping their raspberry shrub in a retired corner of the bar-room, were interested spectators of the scene.  Through the padded swinging doors entered, as in a play, character after character.  Each actor as he entered stopped for a moment and stared about him, and in this act revealed his character-his conceit, his slyness, his bravado, his self-importance.  There was great variety, but practically one prevailing type, and that the New York politician.  Most of them were from the city, though the country politician apes the city politician as much as possible, but he lacks the exact air, notwithstanding the black broadcloth and the white hat.  The city men are of two varieties—­the smart, perky-nosed, vulgar young ward worker, and the heavy-featured, gross, fat old fellow.  One after another they glide in, with an always conscious air, swagger off to the bar, strike attitudes in groups, one with his legs spread, another with a foot behind on tiptoe, another leaning against the counter, and so pose, and drink “My respects”—­all rather solemn and stiff, impressed perhaps by the decorousness of the place, and conscious of their good clothes.  Enter together three stout men, a yard across the shoulders, each with an enormous development in front, waddle up to the bar, attempt to form a triangular group for conversation, but find themselves too far apart to talk in that position, and so arrange themselves side by side—­a most distinguished-looking party, like a portion of a swell-front street in Boston.  To them swaggers up a young sport, like one of Thackeray’s figures in the “Irish Sketch-Book”—­short, in a white hat, poor face, impudent manner, poses before the swell fronts, and tosses off his glass.  About a little table in one corner are three excessively “ugly mugs,” leering at each other and pouring down champagne.  These men are all dressed as nearly like gentlemen as the tailor can make them, but even he cannot change their hard, brutal faces.  It is not their fault that money and clothes do not make a gentleman; they are well fed and vulgarly prosperous, and if you inquire you will find that their women are in silks and laces.  This is a good place to study the rulers of New York; and impressive as they are in appearance, it is a relief to notice that they unbend to each other, and hail one another familiarly as “Billy” and “Tommy.”  Do they not ape what is most prosperous and successful in American life?  There is one who in make-up, form, and air, even to the cut of his side-whiskers, is an exact counterpart of the great railway king.  Here is a heavy-faced young fellow in evening dress, perhaps endeavoring to act the part of a gentleman, who has come from an evening party unfortunately a little “slewed,” but who does not know how to sustain the character, for presently he becomes very familiar and confidential with the dignified colored waiter at the buffet, who requires all his native politeness to maintain the character of a gentleman for two.