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We live in a world of changes, and since the commencement 

 of the present century, in large towns these changes have been 

 very great in regard to inns, as likewise with other institutions. 

 Few of the old and formerly well-known licensed houses can now 

 be considered "places of entertainment for man and beast," and 

 the term licensed victualler is in most cases a misnomer. It 

 is now difficult to find the respectable bar parlour, where the 

 guests meet of evenings to pass an hour or so in improving 

 conversation, political and other, while they smoke the pipe of 

 peace moderately moistened with alcoholic stimulant, such places 

 being few and far between. The innkeeper now-a-days makes his 

 money by selling liquors over the counter of the long bar and 

 depends on what is called the " standing-up" trade. But "old 

 times are changed, old manners gone," and the "standing-up" 

 trade of the gorgeously decorated long bar, where " two penn'orths" 

 of liquor are sold to customers — which means small profits and 

 quick returns — with social clubs now so numerous, have almost 

 entirely superseded the cozy old bar parlour, so great an institution 

 of last century. In the old time the bar parlour of the inn was 

 used as a meeting place for poets, philosophers, and statesmen, 

 consequently there are many poetic associations still connected 

 with those places where social intercourse among great men was 

 formerly held, but this sentiment, it is needless to say, no longer 

 exists in the modern style of innkeeping. 



There is one class which must not be passed without notice, 

 inasmuch as they perhaps make more use of inns than any other — 

 that is, the commercial travellers. The commercial room of the 

 various inns patronised by them along their business route, has in 

 the case of many to be their home for the greatest part of the year. 

 In regard to the antiquity of their vocation, it will probably date 

 back as far as the innkeeper's. When people began to move about 

 from place to place — an indication of growing civilization — there 

 was the pedlar who walked ; then the bagman who took his bags 

 containing samples on horseback, when roads were both rough and 

 unsafe ; then the solitary driver of the gig, when wheel conveyances 

 could go on the smoother highways ; and now, to-day, there are, 



