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

THE BON VIVANT'S COMPANION

teacher at Yale, although the Yale boys learned much from him before he left New Haven to give his message to the world. Instead, he became simply Jerry Thomas, but for more than three score years he lived a life of singular useful ness, and blessed many communities with the abundance of his service.He was a great artist with a touch of true genius, and the importance of his influence upon the gentler and more esthetic aspects of American culture has neither been properly recognized nor adequately estimated. Indeed, he lies in an obscure grave,untopped by granite shaft or public memorial. Briefly, Jerry Thomas was a bartender. But what a bar tender! Hisnameshould not be mentioned in the same breath with that of the frowsy gorilla who, in these dark days of Prohibition, may be found lounging behind the bar of a dingy basement speakeasy, sloshing luke-warm ginger ale into a dirty glass half-filled with raw alcohol, and then call ing the unspeakable concoction a drink. Jerry Thomas had nothing in common with this Volsteadian ape; there is no more a basis of comparison than there is between Michel angelo and Bud Fisher, or Dante and Eddie Guest. For Jerry Thomas was neither frowsy nor a simian; he was an imposing and lordly figure of a man,portly,sleek and jovial, yet possessed of immense dignity. A great diamond gleamed in his shirt front, and a jacket of pure and spotless white encased his great bulk; and a huge and handsome mustache, neatly trimmed in the arresting style called walrus, adorned his lip and lay caressingly athwart his plump and rosy cheeks. He presented an inspiring spectacle as he leaned upon the polished mahogany of his bar, amid the gleam of polished silver and cut glass, and impressively pronounced the immemorial greeting,"What will it be, gentlemen?" a sacred rite which the modern poison slinger has cor rupted into a swipe at a pine board with a greasy cloth and a peevish,"Whatcha want, gents? Hooch?" xvi