Drouet was not a drinker in excess.  He was not a moneyed man.  He only craved the best, as his mind conceived it, and such doings seemed to him a part of the best.  Rector’s, with its polished marble walls and floor, its profusion of lights, its show of china and silverware, and, above all, its reputation as a resort for actors and professional men, seemed to him the proper place for a successful man to go.  He loved fine clothes, good eating, and particularly the company and acquaintanceship of successful men.  When dining, it was source of keen satisfaction to him to know that Joseph Jefferson was wont to come to this same place, r that Henry E. Dixie, a well known performer of the day, was then only a few tables off.  At Rector’s he could always obtain this satisfaction for there one could encounter politicians, brokers, actors, some rich young “rounders” of the town, all eating and drinking amid a buzz of popular commonplace conversation.

" That’s So-and so over there,” was a common remark of these gentlemen among themselves, particularly among those who had not yet reached, but hoped to do so, the dazzling height which money to dine here lavishly represented.

" You don’t say so,” would be the reply.

" Why, yes, didn’t you know that?  Why, he’s manager

of the Grand Opera House.”

When these things would fall upon Drouet’s ears, he would straighten himself a little more stiffly and eat with solid comfort.  If he had any vanity, this augmented it, and if he had any ambition, this stirred it.  He would be able to flash a roll of greenbacks too some day.  As it was, he could eat where they did.

His preference for Fitzgerald and Moy’s Adams Street place was another yard off the same cloth.  This was really a gorgeous saloon from a Chicago standpoint.  Like Rector’s, it was also ornamented with a blaze of incandescent lights, held in handsome chandeliers.  The floors were of brightly colored tiles, the walls a composition of rich, dark, polished wood, which gave the place a very sumptuous appearance.  The long bar was a blaze of lights, polished wood-work, colures and cut glassware, and many fancy bottles.  It was a truly swell saloon, with rich screens, fancy wines, and a line of bar goods unsurpassed in the country.

At Rector’s Drouet had met Mr. G. W. Hurstwood, manager of Fitgerald and Moy’s.  He had been pointed out as a very successful and well-known man about town.  Hurstwood looked the part, for, besides being slightly under forty, he had a good, stout constitution, an active manner, and solid, substantial air, which was composed in part of his fine clothes, his clean linen, his jewels, and, above all, his own sense of his importance.  Drouet immediately conceived a notion of him as being some one worth knowing, and was glad not only to meet him, but to visit the Adams Street bar thereafter whenever he wanted a drink or a cigar.