1939 The Gentleman's Companion volume II Beeing an Exotic Drinking Book

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THE EXOTIC DRINKING BOOK

whom no one much had ever heard of before. Imagine getting there on our third trip, and knowing people, and with a fiancee who had already agreed to the banns, and the plum blossoms frosting the Sum– mer Palace gardens where Old Buddha once strolled, before we re– entered our motor cars and went to the foot of Western Hills where Ellis had sedan chairs and coolies waiting for the madcap, swaying, almost perpendicular climb to the very topmost ridge, past the Ameri– can Minister's temple, and the other Buddhist temples the Europeans rent, through this connivance and that with the willing priests-to Ellis' Grotto of the Propitious Pearl. And there in back of ~is living quarters was a cave in the hills, where he has to let the pilgrims go day or night, and where the mummy of a famous saint sits lifelike, covered with some sort of plaster and tinted lik'e real flesh. Imagine the view at sunset of the distant Tartar walls of Peking, just barely visible through the golden light, with everything powdered with Peking dust which is older than time itself: Picture an impossible grinning combination of Fu Manchu and Houdini who bowed and smiled and produced miraculous things from vast wicker hampers which had, through some other Oriental magic, transported them– selves before us to this place. There between the 500 year old red lacquer columns of that Buddhist pavilion we sat and thought things about Jenghiz Khan, and fi.ancees, and sipped big 3 oz Broken Spurs served in hand engraved crystal champagne glasses. To Yz a jigger of dry gin add the same of Italian vermouth; then r jigger of port wine, I tsp anis del mono or anisette, the yolk of 1 fresh egg. Shake briskly with big lumps of ice and when cold serve in a champagne saucer glass, dusting the top with a pinch of pow– dered ginger at the last. THE BARBADOS BUCK, BEING a FINE REFRESHENER WE RAN into ONE EARLY JANUARY AFTERNOON upon INTRODUCTION to the BRITISH CLUB that CLINGS to the END of the DocK at BRIDGETOWN like a DETERMINED SPIDER Tom Hartnett and Larry Stucky and I had been lying naked on a . 19 .