Chapter 15 - Page 2

immediate neighborhood five hundred workmen were employed on the city buildings, and opposite stood the Pennsylvania Railroad freight depot, to which came daily about the same number of men--draymen, teamsters and others. It took but a few days to so crowd the new coffee-room at the usual lunching time as to require an additional assistant. From day to day the business went on increasing, until more help and larger accommodations became necessary. Soon a complete kitchen had to be built in the basement, and the adjoining store added, in order to meet the steadily-enlarging demands upon the new establishment. The fame of the good coffee, which was better than most people found at home, spread far and near, and larger and larger numbers of clerks, workingmen and others, turned their steps daily, at lunch time, towards the Central Coffee-House. It was so much better than the poor stuff served in most of the eating-houses; and, with the sweet roll added, so much better than the free lunch and glass of beer or whisky with which too many had been accustomed to regale themselves.

SIGNAL SUCCESS.

Steadily swelled the tide of custom. Within a year a third store, adjoining, was added. But the enlarged premises soon proved inadequate to the accommodation of the still-increasing crowd.

At this writing "The Central" is from six to seven times larger than when first opened; and there lunch in its rooms, daily, nearly two thousand persons. One room has been fitted up for ladies exclusively, in which from forty to fifty can lunch at one time.

But Mr. Baily looked beyond the cheap coffee and rolls by which he was able to keep so many away from bar-rooms and restaurants where liquor was sold. He believed in other influences and safeguards. And to this end, and at his own cost, he fitted up the various rooms over the seven stores extending along Market Street from Fifteenth to Broad, in which the coffee-rooms are located, and set them apart for various uses. Here is a lecture-hall, capable of seating four hundred persons; a free reading-room, well warmed and lighted and supplied with the best daily newspapers, American and English illustrated publications, and the standard periodicals; besides four other rooms that will hold from seventy to one hundred persons, which are used for various meeting purposes, all in connection with temperance. Five regular services are held in the lecture-room every week, viz.: "Bible Reading," on Sunday afternoon; "Temperance Experience meeting," on Monday evening; "Prayer and Praise meeting," Tuesday evening; "Gospel Temperance meeting," on Thursday evening; and "Youths' Temperance meeting," Friday evening. These meetings are often crowded, and, like the coffee-rooms below, attract audiences made up from every rank in society. At many of these meetings, Mr. Baily presides in person.

Encouraged by the success of this first