Rum shop

“ To them, that little tot of rum is not simply alcohol. It is a God-send. Promise it to them before they set out, and those men will work like Trojans. Deny it to them, and more than half will parade sick in the morning.
It is no use, if the rum ration is short, to water it down. The men know it is watered, and their remarks are “frequent and painful, and free!” Woe betide the officer who, through innocence or intentionally, looks too freely on the rum when it is brown! His reputation is gone for ever. ”

“ Sometimes the composition consists of low-priced Jamaica rums, rectified spirits of wine, and the Leeward-island rums, with the necessary acid vegetable substances, to give them false strength and pungency and the requisite flavour; and thus the purchaser is accommodated by the “caterers of comfort,” with a rum which “cannot” be adulterated, of exceedingly fine and superior flavour, remarkably cheap and for ready money only. ”

“ Few men take their rum in the same fashion or with the same expression. The new draft look at it coyly, carry the cup gingerly to their lips, smell it, make a desperate resolution, gulp it down, and cough for five minutes afterwards. The old hands—the men of rubicund countenance and noses of a doubtful hue—grasp the cup, look to see if the issue is a full one, raise it swiftly, and drain it without a moment’s hesitation, smacking their lips. You can see the man who was up for being drunk the last pay-day coming from afar for his rum. ”

“ They contain all the necessaries of fermentation, and when mixed with molasses and “dunder,” which is the fermented wash left from distillation, are distilled into rum.
The odour of rum is very volatile; so much so, that it should be casked immediately after distillation. The raw spirit is extremely injurious; but it improves so much by age that, at a sale in Carlisle in 1865, rum, known to be 140 years old, sold at three guineas a bottle. Like all alcohol, rum, when distilled, is white, the colour being given to it, as it used to be in brown brandy, by caramel (burnt sugar) . ”

“ The ripe taste which rum or brandy that has been long kept in oaken casks obtains, is imparted to new brandy and rum, by means of a spirituous tincture of raisin-stones and oak saw-dust. And the water distilled from cherry-laurel-leaves is frequently mixed with brandy and other spirituous liquors to impart to them the flavour of the cordial called Noyeau. Sugar of lead not unfrequently forms part of the flavouring ingredients of the retailers’ rums.
But the perfection of adulteration is in gin,—cheap gin—“the real comfort,”—patronized by the poor for its supposed genuineness! ”

“ Rum has a deep brown colour imparted by caramel or by storage in sherry casks, or, most generally, by both. “Tafia” is an inferior quality of rum produced in the French colonies. “Negro” rum, which is the lowest quality of all, and into the wash for which the débris of the sugar-cane enters, is consumed locally by the coloured workers. The spirit prepared from beet-sugar molasses cannot be regarded as rum, for, unless it is highly rectified, it possesses a disagreeable odour and taste. ”

“ The average strength of rum, as imported into this country, is about 20 O.P. Like all other spirits, it is colourless when it issues from the still, but owing to the taste of the consumer the distiller is compelled to colour it before it leaves his premises. ”

“ I have seen a journalist suck half a lemon, previously well besprinkled with cayenne, prior to commencing his matutinal “scratch.” But rum and milk form, I believe, the favourite livener throughout the district which lies between the Adelphi Theatre and St. Paul’s Cathedral. And, according to Doctor Edward Smith (the chief English authority on dietetics) , rum and milk form the most powerful restorative known to science. With all due respect to Doctor Smith I am prepared to back another restorative, commonly known as “a small bottle”; which means a pint of champagne. ”

“ The barrels were coming in fast, so fast that it was impossible for the representatives of law and order to keep on any sort of terms with them. The people, shouting with laughter, stove in the casks, and drank rum at 34° above proof, out of their hands, out of their hats, out of their boots. Women came fluttering over the hillsides through the twilight, carrying jugs, milk-pails, anything that would hold the liquor; I saw one of them, roaring with laughter, tilt a filthy zinc bucket to an old man's lips. ”

“ The young men had named Pasa “La Santita Naranjadita.” Naranjadita is a Spanish word for a certain colour that you must go to more trouble to describe in English. By saying “The little saint, tinted the most beautiful-delicate-slightly-orange-golden,” you will approximate the description of Madama Ortiz’s daughter.
La Madama Ortiz sold rum in addition to other liquors. Now, you must know that the rum expiates whatever opprobrium attends upon the other commodities. For rum-making, mind you, is a government monopoly; and to keep a government dispensary assures respectability if not preëminence. ”

“ Rum is made in Bengal from refuse sugar, the same as in the West Indies; its quality is by no means inferior, though it sells, when new, at the very cheap rate of about a rupee the gallon. It is to be had, of a good age, of the several great distillers and merchants, at a proportionate advance. I have known it, after being six years in the godown, (warehouse,) to be compared with Jamaica Rum, warranted ten years old; when the preference was given decidedly in favor of the former. ”

“ There is a large market, perhaps the largest, where people from the neighboring towns and [198] villages daily buy and sell their merchandise. There are two rum distilleries, owned by two French gentlemen, a large sugar factory, established by an Englishman, I presume ”

“ The Dutch in New York called the liquor brandy-wine, and soon in that colony wherever strong waters were named in tavern lists, the liquor was neither aqua vitæ nor gin nor brandy, but New England rum.
[Pg 102] It soon was cheap enough. Rev. Increase Mather, the Puritan parson, wrote, in 1686: “It is an unhappy thing that in later years a Kind of Drink called Rum has been common among us. They that are poor and wicked, too, can for a penny make themselves drunk.” ”

“ Submit whispered to her father, and the old man merely poured a double portion of rum into the cider flip, with which the huskers were being regaled, and soon all went prosperously again. For rum in those good old days was recognized as equally the accompaniment of toil and recreation, and therefore had a double claim to the attention of huskers. From a sale of meeting-house pews or an ordination, to a ball or a general training, rum was the touch of nature that made the whole world of our forefathers kin. ”

“ Rum selling, and rum drinking, are abominations that make desolate the hearts and homes of multitudes; and it is amazing that sensible men will rush headlong to destruction with the bottle in their hands and their eyes wide open. ”

“ Every stronghold of rum is invested; first one and then another champion ranges up before the proprietor and offers up a special petition for him; he has to stand meekly there behind his bar, under the eyes of a great concourse of ladies who are better than he is and are aware of it, and hear all the secret iniquities of his business divulged to the angels above, accompanied by the sharp sting of wishes for his regeneration, which imply an amount of need for it which is in the last degree uncomfortable to him. ”

“ Mix thoroughly, then pour over two quarts of boiling water, and set the jug on the hob for thirty minutes. Strain the mixture into a punch-bowl, and when cool add one small bottle of capillaire (an infusion of maidenhair fern, flavoured with sugar and orange-flower water) ; one pint of brandy, one pint of rum, half-a-pint of dry sherry, and one quart of orange shrub—a mixture of orange-peel, juice, sugar, and rum.
After drinking this, the young student will be in a fit state to sally forth, with his fellows, and “draw” a Dean, or drown an amateur journalist. ”

“ When the little town of Medfield, early in the last century, "raised" the new meeting house, there were required "four barrels beer, twenty-four gallons West Indian rum, thirty gallons New England rum, thirty-five pounds loaf sugar, twenty-five pounds brown sugar, and four hundred and sixty-five lemons." A house could not be built without liquor being distributed at every stage of the operation, and this practice was not obsolete till well on in this century. ”

“ This was the allowance of solid food served out once a-day to each, from that time to the end; with the addition of a coffee-berry, or sometimes half a one, when the weather was very fair, for breakfast. We had nothing else whatever, but half a pint of water each per day, and sometimes, when we were coldest and weakest, a teaspoonful of rum each, served out as a dram. I know how learnedly it can be shown that rum is poison, but I also know that in this case, as in all similar cases I have ever read of—which are numerous—no words can express the comfort and support derived from it. ”

“ Why do you laugh in that way?”
“Excuse me—but you have such an odd way of borrowing that I cannot help it. This bottle, it seems, was brought over for your own convenience, not for mine. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I have no whiskey.”
“I guess spirits will do as well; I know there is some in that keg, for I smells it.”
“It contains rum for the workmen.”
“Better still. I calculate when you've been here a few months, you'll be too knowing to give rum to your helps. But old country folks are all fools, and that's the reason they get so easily sucked in, and be so soon wound-up. ”

“ In the towns they cheat and pilfer; they gamble in the streets; they drink hard on Saturdays and Sundays, and at times they murder one another. Liquor is cheap; a bottle of aguardente or caxaça (new raw rum) costs only fivepence, and the second distillation ninepence. ”

“ An English traveller named Bennet wrote at the same date of Boston society: “Madeira wine and rum punch are the liquors they drink in common.” Baron Riedésel, who commanded the foreign troops in America during the Revolution, wrote of the New England inhabitants: “Most of the males have a strong passion for strong drink, especially rum.” ”

“ If one man begins, the rest take it up. The noise thus made appears deafening. To obviate this, petrol tins of water and tea in hot food-containers have been dumped about the assembly positions, so that men may from time to time moisten their mouths and throats. Further, a tot of rum is served to all. Rum played a great part in the war. It produces a marvellous and immediate effect, dispelling depression, creating warmth, and stimulating the morale. Even the staunchest teetotallers will drink rum with avidity in the assembly trenches. ”

“ I’ll moisten their throats with rum; we’re perfectly safe here; tell the steward to roll a barrel on deck; they shall drink until they can’t stand.”
The storm had, in the meantime, blown over; the sea was placid, and the full moon was rising gloriously. The table was already spread; I hastened to the cabin, taking with me the laudanum bottle from the medicine chest, out of which I poured a stupefying dose into the rum-cask and into every bottle of Bordeaux, except the one destined for my own use, which I marked by a cut in the cork. ”

“ The mode of judging by the taste of spiritous liquors is deceitful. A false strength is given to a weak liquor, by infusing in it acrid vegetable substances, or by adding to it a tincture of grains of paradise and Guinea pepper. These substances impart to weak brandy or rum, an extremely hot and pungent taste.
Brandy and rum is also frequently sophisticated with British molasses, or sugar-spirit, coloured with burnt sugar. ”

“ Here old fellow," murmured the intruder, in a tone one adopts in propitiating strange dogs.
He shook the pannikin, and the Missing Link detected the familiar flavour of rum, good red-rum, bush rum. Nickie sniffed again, and backed away, growling a low, guttural growl. The Missing Link had a great tenderness for rum, the smell of it excited profound longings, but he wanted time to deliberate. ”

“ Jim—Then I will trade elsewhere. I have been drinking your rum for a long time, and I have always paid you for it, and I have got drunk many a time on your rum, and now you won’t let me have a glass on credit. You must have an iron heart.
Peter—Jim, you have drunk a large quantity of rum at my bar, and you have always paid me for it, as you declare, but I am going to turn over a new leaf, and trust no more. But if you will promise never to ask me to trust you again, I will let you have as nice a glass of rum as you ever drank. ”

“ While President John Adams said caustically: “If the ancients drank wine as our people drink rum and cider, it is no wonder we hear of so many possessed with devils;” yet he himself, to the end of his life, always began the day with a tankard of hard cider before breakfast.
The Dutch were too constant beer drinkers to become with speed great rum consumers, and they were too great lovers of gin and schnapps. But they deprecated the sharp and intolerant prohibition of the sale of rum to the Indians, saying: “To prohibit all strong liquor to them seems very hard and very Turkish. ”

“ Let him pay heavily for his luxuries. He wants you much; I only hope we may find he wants the rum more.”
“There are plenty of mermaids, but only one bottle of rum that we know of. I swam all through the sunken ship and drove the fishes from the dead men, and a drowned [183] woman with a baby in her arms. There is no rum left there. Air-breathers must love the liquid also, for they had all rushed to drink before their drowning. ”