Some Genial Old Drinking Customs

Abstract

It is no accident that the cocktail has become the great American drink. Yo-ho-ho-, and a bottle of rum, may well be said to have been the internationale of our forefathers. They arrived in the New World firm in the conviction, still prevalent in the Old, that water was meant for washing, not for drinking. To be sure, Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts decreed that water should be drunk by all members of his household, but it is well known that his servants deserted in large numbers shortly after arrival, thus early creating that bug-a-boo of American life, the servant problem. As a whole, the colonists possessed a sturdy thirst. They were, naturally, eager to drink that to which they had been accustomed at home. This usually meant beer and ale. As early as 1609 the Governor and Council for Virginia advertised for two brewers to go to the colony, and the Assembly advised that all emigrants should bring along a supply of malt. Even in New England the Reverend Francis Higginson of Salem, writing home to England of things which were better for you to think of there than to want them here, mentions for drinke and does not neglect to specify 1 gallon of aquavitae for each person. Before long, however, some bold soul had discovered that the persimmon, so plentiful in Virginia and the South Atlantic States, was excellently adapted to the making of beer, and the tradition of home brew was thus started. The persimmon was treated very much as was a wine brick of prohibition years. The fruit, seeds and all, was crushed, mixed with wheat bran, then baked in cakes. As occasion arose, the cakes were soaked in water and the beer brewed. The white trash of the seventeenth century, poor then as today, used as a substitute for malt almost anything on which they could lay hands. Dried Indian corn, the green stalks of the corn chopped and mashed, pumpkins, even potatoes, were called into play. Doubtless in this variety of emergency brew is to be found the origin of Old Hen, a concoction of, apparently, almost anything, made by the colored cooks of Virginia during the dry era, and fondly drunk when nothing better was at hand. It was not beer, however, that was destined to quench the thirst of the New World, but rum. From the time of its first introduction in the early seventeenth century, it became at once the most popular and the most reviled drink in the world. Its use and