You give a nigger a plain gill of half-a-dollar brandy for five cents--will he touch it?
No.
Ain't size enough to it.

But you put up a pint of all kinds of worthless rubbish, and heave in some red stuff to make it beautiful--red's the main thing--and he wouldn't put down that glass to go to a circus.' All the bars on this Anchor Line are rented and owned by one firm.
They furnish the liquors from their own establishment, and hire the barkeepers 'on salary.' Good liquors?
Yes, on some of the boats, where there are the kind of passengers that want it and can pay for it.

On the other boats?
No.

Nobody but the deck hands and firemen to drink it.
'Brandy?
Yes, I've got brandy, plenty of it; but you don't want any of it unless you've made your will.' It isn't as it used to be in the old times.

Then everybody traveled by steamboat, everybody drank, and everybody treated everybody else.