Cables announce that, since the lifting of Prohibition, public bars in the U.S.A. have failed to attract popular custom, hotel visitors preferring to drink privately in their rooms. "Fourteen years of sneak drinking," it is said, "have left their mark."

Foot on the rail in the olden days,
   For all the world to see,
A jolly old lot, they took their pot
   All unashamed and free,
Passing their jest from lip to lip,
   Puffing away the foam,
Till a small voice cried from the path outside:
   "Ma says, you're to come on home."
 
Foot on the rail they faced the world
   And cared not who should know;
And many they went, thro' a life mis-spent
   -- As man a man must go --
Straight to the dogs from the old brass rail,
   Lost and ruined and wrecked:
But he went to his fate with the game played straight:
   And he went with his head erect.
 
Then came the camel, with his lip adroop,
   Calling an end to fun.
Tho' his cause was strong, his way was wrong,
   And his task was most ill done.
Turning a man to a furtive sneak,
   Stealing by ways obscure,
Bad if you will was the old, old ill;
   But worse by far was the cure.
 
Oh, man will sin as his fathers sinned
   Since ever this world was made;
But, if he must sin, then let him sin
   In the open, unafraid;
Foot on the old brass rail again
   For all the world to see.
A jolly old lot who takes his tot
   All unashamed and free.

"Den"
Herald, 14 December 1933, p6