Bill Baeck on the Shakespeare references (Apr 5 2020):

To clarify a few perhaps obscure quotes from the article, here is what they are referring to...

“Alas, poor Bahrs! I knew him well. He was an infinite jest.”

This is a paraphrase from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 1 (I’ve highlighted the source of the paraphrase):

HAMLET: Let me see. (takes the skull) Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. —Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.”

In this scene, Hamlet and his friend Horatio walk past a cemetery, where they encounter a gravedigger who has just dug up the skeleton of the court jester from Hamlet’s childhood. This scene knits together the themes of death, corruption, and the futility of life and unimportance of wealth and rank that run throughout the play.

“In the roaring seventies, as Mr. Wilkins explained, when the Comstock boomed and ginger was hot i’ the mouth […].”

This reference also comes from Shakespeare, in this case Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3.

Sir Toby: (To Malvolio) Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Feste: Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i' th' mouth too.

Here Sir Toby Belch and the Fest the clown are mocking the puritan Malvolio. Essentially they are saying that even if Malvolio decides to remain virtuous, others will still continue to drink and party. (The ginger Feste refers to was commonly added to ale to spice it up.)
 

“It was a picturesque old shack in a way, not ornamental, perhaps, but quite free from the pretentious vulgarity of the present structure which seems to carry a suggestion of what the bakers call ‘charlotte russe goods.’”

The reference to “charlotte russe [sic] goods” is yet another bit of anti-European sentiment seen in this article. It implies anything that looks ornate but is overdone by American standards—a kind of foreign frippery like the raisins in the lady’s hat mentioned earlier in the article. Specifically, a Charlotte Russe is a layered, cream-filled patisserie cake that was popular in Europe at the time and which American bakers (then and now) sometimes carried in their shops.

From wikipedia (link):

“Russian Charlotte or Charlotte russe is a dessert invented by the French chef Marie-Antoine Carême (1784–1833), who named it in honor of his former employer George IV’s only child, Princes Charlotte, and his current, Russian employer Czar Alexander I (russe being the French word for "Russian"). It is a cold dessert of Bavarian cream set in a mold lined with ladyfingers.”