1908 The World's Drinks and How to Miw Them by Hon Wm Boothby (1st edition)

128

WITTY, WJSE AND O'l'HERWJSE.

Absence (absinthe) makes the heart grow fonder, and absinthe makes the jag last longer. Do not lay siphons of effervescent water on ice, especially in warm weather, as the side next to the ice contracts, while the opposite side expands. Many serious explosions have occurred in consequence of carelessness in this respect. The production of beer in the United States has grown from a little over 6,000,000 barrels in 1870 to probably more than 50,000,000 barrels in the present year. It has grown nearly fom times as fast as the population. If we were not furnishing the people a good, pure and healthful product this remarkable bcrease would have been impossible. 'fhe average wine product of Italy is 750,000,000 gallons annually; 25,000,000 of which are exported, leaving 725,000,000 gallons for home con– sumption. The population of the kingdom numbers nearly 30,000,000 souls; therefore if the wine was equally measured out, every man, woman and child in Italy would drink nearly twenty-five gallons of wine per year. The word whiskey and whiskey itself a re both unquestionably of Irish odgin, a nd the Irish taught the Scotch people how to make it. As for the name, it springs from the Irish word "uisgue," which means water. The clistillecl spirit was called by the Irish in ancient times "uisgue betha," or life-giving water. Distillation is a process said to have been known to the Arabians in r emote ages, but the first author to speak of it explicitly-and · he speaks of it also as a recent discovery-was a chemist who lived in the thirteenth century, Aronaldus De Villa Nova. Nova deemed distillation to be the universal panacea which all ages had sought for in vain. The cry of "modern degeneration" was raised even in those far-off clays, and a pupil of Nova, one Raymond Lully, of Maporca, acclaimed distilled water as a divine emanation, declared that it was destined to revive the energies of "modern decrepitude." This aqua vit!B, indeed, denoted the consummation of all things, in the brain of Lully; it heralded even the encl of the world. It is a legend of St. Patrick that he was the first who instructed the Irish in the a rt of distillation.~ Certain modern historians, however, hotly contest this, setting forth the evidence of a uthentic sources of information that St. Patrick was an exceedingly strict promoter of temperance. The argument is scarcely strong, for there is obviously nothing really antagonistic in the two ideas. Besides, distilled spirit, w!rnther brandy or whiskey, as we know it to-day, was used in early ages for medicinal purposes and not as a beverage. In Sca ndinavia the sale of intoxicating beverages is always controlled by municipal communities,- cities, towns, etc.,-and al l the profits a re applied to t he maintenance of schools, hospitals, etc. Only hotels a re permitted to retai l Ii 1uors, an1l t heir stock mu st be pmchased from t he municipality. 0 1'a11gl's, IC' rnons and limes keep best when wrapped in tissue pape l' ::incl kept in a clrii,w<;ir,