1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS

123

I remember well having

to be mixed with her tea.

my curiosity excited by this, to me, novel form of taking medicine, and holding on by the back of a chair to watch the modits operandi. Very much to my astonishment, the patient held a liqueur bottle over a cup of tea, and began to pour out its contents, with a peculiar purblind look, upon the back of a teaspoon. Presently, she seemed suddenly to become aware of what she was about, turned up fhe spoon the right way, and carefully measured, and added the quantity The Tea, so strongly 'laced,' she now drank with great apparent gusto." We derive our name of Brandy from the Dutch bi^and-zmjn, or the German brannt-wein, that is, burnt or distilled z£/^/^^ ; and in the 17th and i8th centuries it was generally spelt, and spoken of as brandy wine. But, also, in those centuries was it known by the name of '' Pslantz," from the town (Nantes, the capital of the Loire Inferieure) whence it came. But this name was changed early last century, when the trade left Nantes, and got into the Charente district, of which Cognac was the centre ; so what used to be " right good Nantz" of the old smuggling days, turned into the delicate, many-starred ** Cognac " of our times. It was an eminently respectable spirit. Whiskey was practically unknown out of Scotland and Ireland. Gin was the drink of the common people, and rum was considered only fit for sailors. Even Dr. Johnson, though so fond of his tea, was also fond of brandy, as Boswell chronicles of him, when in his 70th year: to which she had been restricted.