Liquor

“ As the clear liquor comes up silvery and sparkling, rolling up the white, beautiful sand, and flowing off, to revive and refresh all the thousands that come, even the drinker forgets his whisky, and pays some passionate tribute to the "blessed good water." ”

“ Their pockets are distended with bottles of spirits: they drink, wiping the necks of the bottles with hardened palms ... the liquor sends a livid flush, a purple veil of heat, over faces seared and pitted with poverty. ”

“ There has been more flub-dub printed and spoken about drinking liquor than about any other employment, avocation, vocation, habit, practice or pleasure of mankind. Drinking liquor is a personal proposition, and nothing else. ”

“ The little tables were spread tinder the trees, and then, later on, perhaps, the customers were spread under the tables.—I would ask you to recall the manly seidel of dark beer as you knew it, the bitter chill of it as it went down, the simple felicity it induced in the care-burdened mind. I could quote to you poet after poet who has nourished his song upon honest malt liquor. ”

“ Few men drink liquor for the love of it. A vast deal of alcohol is consumed just because it seems devilish. When the host tips his guest the wink and stealthily leads the way to the back-closet under the stairs and produces a black bottle, how the flavor of the liquor is improved by the vicious delight in evading the watchfulness of the members of the Women’s Temperance Society gathered in the parlor! ”

“ “Such poor liquor do make a man’s throat feel very melancholy—and is a disgrace to the name of stimmilent.” ”

“ But I tell you what, lads, stick to the light wines, and a moderate quantity of them will do you no harm; but eschew spirits-and-water, or spirits in any shape, as you would poison, and when you drink beer, don’t go swilling away huge quantities, as I see some fellows doing, as if their insides were mere tuns made to hold liquor. Just look at the great, fat, pursy, bloated fellows you often meet, and think how you would like to become as they are. ”

“ Soon they have formed a love for the taste of liquor, and before ever they know it, like hundreds of thousands of others who have preceded them, they have become fond of liquor, and are on a fair road to become drunkards. As soon as a young man starts out in this direction he takes the road that leads down to death and destruction, and the love of God which he had in his heart soon dies out. Let me place this bottle over the candle. ”

“ As a matter of fact they seldom look on what we would call liquor at all, hardly ever getting a glympse of anything hard such as rye, scotch or gin, and a cocktail being practically a stranger and a repulsive one at that to them. ”

“ Willing as they were to listen to my counsel and admit that I was certainly a great white teacher, with superior wisdom, on this love for liquor and its debasing consequences they would hear no words. The women and girls, like the men, would clamor for the raw alcohol, and gulp it down in long draughts. ”

“ The whole Quantity of Liquor being thus set to work, secured in a proper Degree of Warmth, and defended from a too free Intercourse of the external Air, Nature itself, as it were, finishes the Process, and renders the Liquor fit for the Still. ”

“ Now I need not tell any gentleman or lady with common understanding, that if he or she was to drink an honest bottle of whiskey at one pull, it is not at all the same thing as drinking a bottle of water; and in the whole course of my life, I never knew more than five men who could do so without being overtaken by the liquor. ”

“ The education of the tastes for more refined amusements than the counter of the gin-palace or the back parlour of the whisky-shop afford, that has superseded the craving for the excitement of spirituous liquor. ”

“ Any kind of Drink, whether it be Canary, Metheglin, or Beer, which easily sowre in Summer, if you would amend them, to a Tun of the Liquor put about two or three Ounces of fixed Nitre put up in a Linen Rag into the Bung-hole at the top of the Cask, and let it hang down into the Liquor, then in a short time the sowre Liquor will be rendered drinkable. ”

“ The first glass of wine is drunk in silence to the memory of the departed, whose good qualities are then dilated upon, but the conversation soon becomes general, and it not unfrequently happens that more liquor is imbibed than is altogether good for the guests. ”

“ Alcohol, which, from its portable qualities, containing the greatest quantity of fiery spirit in the smallest compass, is the only liquor carried across the mountains, is the inflammatory beverage at these carousals, and is dealt out to the trappers at four dollars a pint. ”

“ Perhaps it should be noted that the subjects of the experiment were all men habituated to the use of liquor, one of them being accustomed to take four glasses of beer each week day, and eight or ten on Sundays. ”

“ In this discussion, the balance of experience, of reason, and of authority is vastly in favour of the temperate man rather than the abstainer, and it may be said without fear of contradiction from any reasonable or unbiassed person that, for the great majority of the people of this country, the most wholesome, the most nutritious, and the most pleasing alcoholic liquor, is the “wine of the country,” good, sound ale and beer. ”

“ Howbeit, as the beer well sodden in the brewing, and stale, is clear and well coloured as muscadel or malvesey, or rather yellow as the gold noble, as our pot-knights call it, so our ale, which is not at all or very little sodden, and without hops, is more thick, fulsome, and of no such continuance, which are three notable things to be considered in that liquor. ”

“ Beer, like all other liquors, is of no value whatever in making strength; it only nerves you up to spend all you can muster under the excitement it causes, and then leaves you weaker than before. What you need when you crave liquor is a good, warm meal. ”

“ I myself, who have never been a great wine-drinker, used to find that half-a-dozen glasses of wine advantageously affected the faculties—brightened and intensified the consciousness, and gave to the mind a feeling of being “ponderibus librata suis;” and certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man that he is disguised in liquor ”

“ Sundry brown mugs, containing cider or beer, were placed between the heavy andirons, and little groups were formed among the guests, as subjects arose, or the liquor was passed from one to the other. No man was seen to drink by himself, nor in any instance was more than one vessel considered necessary, for the same beverage ”

“ The stanch old soakers, on the other hand,—men who, if put on tap, would have yielded a red alcoholic liquor by way of blood,—usually confined themselves to plain brandy-and-water, gin, or West India rum; and, oftentimes, they prefaced their dram with some medicinal remark as to the wholesomeness and stomachic qualities of that particular drink. ”

“ When written history begins, all civilized and semi-civilized people, and many savages besides, are found drinking some sort of fermented liquor, wine, cider, or one of the many kinds of beer. Back of written history, tradition has it that the practice was from immemorial time. No people had handed down a story of an early past when such liquor was not an integral and familiar part of each day’s diet, usually with meals. ”

“ "Drunk, if you like; so much the worse for those who fear wine, for it is because they have some bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts."
And Caderousse began to sing the last two lines of a song very popular at the time:
"'Les méchants sont beuveurs d'eau; ”

“ You folks all b'leeve that its lovin' liquor that makes men drink it; now, 'taint no sech thing. I never had a chance to taste fancy drinks, but I know that every kind of liquor I ever got hold of was more like medicine than anything nice. ”

“ That has become the general motto. It sounds very filthy to hear of the astounding quantities of liquor consumed. But, in the first place, where much is drunk, it is only very light stuff. And, to make it less trying, [Pg 262] the drinkers adopt the Socratic maxim of "small cups and many," by frothing the beer up incredibly. Altogether they follow good classical rules, which it is curious to trace, and which make their symposia rather interesting. Drinking is not the end, but only the natural means for attaining hilarity. And there is a good deal of rough geniality about it. ”

“ Wine, blessed liquor as it is, possesses nevertheless one defect, which blot on its escutcheon is that it cannot carry over till next day, except in so far as a headache is concerned, and a certain dryness of the mouth. ”

“ Even ladies, young and fair, went about the streets offering glasses of the attractive liquor to their acquaintance and friends, and it would have been a positive insult to have refused it from their hands. ”

“ A fermented liquor, for example, which is called beer, but which, as it is made of molasses, bears very little resemblance to our beer, makes a considerable part of the common drink of the people in America. ”

“ No person shall, except as otherwise especially provided, manufacture, sell, furnish, or give away, by himself, clerk, servant, or agent, spirituous or intoxicating liquor, or mixed liquor of which a part is spirituous or intoxicating, or malt liquors or lager-beer; and the phrase 'intoxicating liquors,' where it occurs in this chapter, shall be held to include such liquors and beer. ”

“ Intemperate habits (where the man drinks a pure, though coarse and fiery, liquor, like New England rum) tend to check the consumptive tendency, though the drunkard, who himself escapes the consequences, may transmit the fatal seed to his children. ”

“ Then to every pint of Liquor put a pound of Sugar, and boil it up to a gelly, skimming it well, as the scum riseth, and you will have a pure gelly.
GELLY OF RED CURRANTS
Take them clean picked, and fresh gathered in the morning, in a bason, set them over the fire, that their juyce may sweat out, pressing them all the while with the back of your preserving spoon, to squeese out of them all that is good. When you see all is out, strain the Liquor from them, and let it stand to settle four or five hours, that the gross matter may sink to the bottom. ”

“ one should always drink some kind of fermented liquor with one's food--and especially deeply upon great feast-days; one should go on the water from time to time; ”

“ The Men of Faith will play the cup-bearers at this lifelong bacchanal, filling and ever filling again with the warm liquor that the Intelligences, in sad and sober privacy behind the scenes, will brew for the intoxication of their subjects.” ”

“ The use of the Glass, is, that in the heat of the Day it will fill itself with the Liquor, and when the cool of the Evening comes on, that Liquor will again be return'd into the Cask; by which means the Liquor will become sour much sooner than it will otherwise do. ”

“ The liquor perspired becomes sensible to us by being collected from a branch introduced into any sufficiently capacious glass vessel, and proves, for the most part, a clear watery liquor like the sap, and subject to similar chemical changes. ”

“ For as this is the liquor of modern historians, nay, perhaps their muse, if we may believe the opinion of Butler, who attributes inspiration to ale, it ought likewise to be the potation of their readers, since every book ought to be read with the same spirit and in the same manner as it is writ. ”

“ The English had a drink which they call ale, and which he thought the wholesomest liquor that could be drank; for whereas the body of man is supported by natural heat and radical moisture, there is no drink conduceth more to the preservation of the one, and the increase of the other, than ale: for, while the Englishmen drank only ale, they were strong, brawny, able men, and could draw an arrow an ell long ”

“ The liquor is now suffered to stand in a cool place, where it soon deposits a powder that ought to be repeatedly washed, first with cold, and afterwards with hot water, till it be completely divested of its taste. ”

“ By the Excise laws at present existing in this country, the various degrees of strength of brandy, rum, arrack, gin, whiskey, and other spiritous liquors, chiefly composed of little else than spirit of wine, are determined by the quantity of alcohol of a given specific gravity contained in the spiritous liquors of a supposed unknown strength. ”

“ The porter and stout of the metropolis have long been famous. The virtues of the latter drink are celebrated all over the world; and a royal duke, ascribed the great [Pg 83] mortality among the guards in the East to the want of their favourite beverage. No doubt the pure liquor, as it comes from the great brewers, is wholesome and strengthening; but it no sooner gets into the possession of the publicans than, in a great majority of cases, the article is made up. ”

“ Egyptian Beer and Brandy.—Mexican Pulque.—Plant-worship.—Union with the Godhead by Alcohol.—Soma.—The Cow-religion.—Caxiri.—Murwa Beer.—Bacchic Rites.—Spiritual Exaltation by Wine.
One of the strongest desires of human nature is the passion for some kind or another of alcoholic stimulants. Intoxicating liquors are made by savages in primeval forests, and travellers in all parts of the world have found the natives conversant with the art of preparing some sort of stimulating liquor in the shape of beer, wine, or spirit. ”

“ What Armstrong said one hundred and thirty years ago I entreat my medical brethren to believe now. I repeat it: if you want to prescribe spirits, do so; if you want to give wine, give pure wine. One bottle of good Burgundy will give twice the flavour and half the spirit that port does. [223]
In 1735 was published A Friendly Admonition to the Drinkers of Brandy and other Distilled Spirituous Liquors. The author laments that man has found means to extract from what God intended for his refreshment, a most pernicious and intoxicating liquor. ”