1929 The Bon Vivant's Companion or How to Mix Drinks by Jerry Thomas

INTRODUCTION

edition of TheBon Vivant's Companion,but in the last print ing the Archbishop,the Cardinal and the Pope were omitted, because of protests from the various Protestant denomina tions, which complained that the proportion of four Roman Catholic drinks to one Protestant was unreasonable and unfair. Professor Thomas left the Metropolitan in 1859 to brave the dangers of a transatlantic voyage, but he was both sea sick and homesick, and in less than a year he was again in New York,and at Broadway and Washington Place opened the most ornate barroom in the metropolis. But within another twelve months the wanderlust led him in a covered wagon to San Francisco, where he was Principal Bartender in the Occidental Hotel for almost two years.Then he joined a wagon train to Virginia City, Nevada Territory, where he introduced sound drinking practices and amassed another small fortune in gold dust. In 1865 he returned to New York,and thereafter roamed no more. He opened a barroom at Broadway and Twenty-second Street which became one of the most celebrated saloons in the history of the city, and was frequented by the best citizens. Thomas Nast was then a young man struggling to find his place in the field of art, and Professor Thomas gra ciously extended a helping hand and opened his back room to the first exhibition of Nast cartoons. A hundred carica tures of prominent personages were displayed upon the walls, and Nast leaped into instant popularity. Later Ned Mullin, a brilliant but dissipated caricaturist, also exhibited his work in Professor Thomas's art gallery, as did Theodore Wust and Junmp, clever draughtsmen who had been dis covered in San Francisco by the Professor and brought to New York to make their little artistic splashes. After seven years of continuous success and popularity, xxxvii Ill