Rum

“ Are we to go on all our lives making beasts of ourselves, guzzling rum—I—I beg your pardon, gentlemen. I didn't mean to say that, really. Rum is about the only decent thing in this place. Rum keeps us alive. If any man says a word against rum, I'll call him an infernal ass. ”

“ We'll wave farewell to our brown-skinned lasses and, chorussing out to the billows of glory,
Billows a-glitter with rum and gold, we'll follow the sunset over the sea!
While earth goes round, let rum go round! ”

“ 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! ”

“ Oh, if the wretched, awful misery occasioned by rum, which I alone have seen, could be pictured to the world, it does seem to me that no sane man or woman could ever look upon the picture and live, without becoming so affected that they would foreswear all intoxicating beverages for ever afterwards. ”

“ They call Rum and Physick by one Name, which implies that Rum make People sick, as when they have taken any poisonous Plant; yet they cannot forbear Rum. They make Offerings of their First-Fruits, and the more serious sort of them throw into the Ashes, near the Fire, the first Bit or Spoonful of every Meal they sit down to, which, they say, is the same to them, as the pulling off our Hats, and talking, when we go to Victuals, is to us. ”

“ Having got thus far, he looked about him again, and sighed grievously; with that, he walked softly into the bar, and presently returning with the tumbler half full of pine–apple rum, advanced to the kettle which was singing gaily on the hob, mixed his grog, stirred it, sipped it, sat down, and taking a long and hearty pull at the rum–and–water, stopped for breath. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As upon such occasions tars will ask
For grog, and sometimes drink rum from the cask.
XXXIV
There's nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms
As rum and true religion: thus it was,
Some plunder'd, some drank spirits, some sung psalms,
The high wind made the treble, and as bas
The hoarse harsh waves kept time; fright cured the qualms
Of all the luckless landsmen's sea-sick maws:
Strange sounds of wailing, blasphemy, devotion,
Clamour'd in chorus to the roaring ocean. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pure, old rum, is incomparably more wholesome than brandy; Dr. Short, therefore, prefers it to any other spirit, both as a cordial, and for making punch. It softens and dilates the alimentary canal, while it promotes a more regular perspiration, as well as the discharge of urine. ”

“ Give us such whiskey as we call for of thy best, with lemons and sugar, but in place of hot water in the kettle, see to it that as often as it is replenished, it be filled with thy newest and palest rum. ”

“ Rum and brandy, glenlivet and guava jelly, limes, green tea, and a slight suspicion of preserved ginger,—nothing else, upon honor,—and the most simple mixture for the cure, the radical cure, of blue devils and debt I know of; eh, Doctor? You advise it yourself, to be taken before bed-time; nothing inflammatory in it, nothing pugnacious; a mere circulation of the better juices and more genial spirits of the marly clay, without arousing any of the baser passions; whiskey is the devil for that. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rum.—Rum is obtained by the distillation of the fermented juice of sugar-cane or of molasses; a very considerable proportion of the article bearing this name is, however, made from grain spirit. In France and Germany the mother-liquor remaining after the extraction of beet-sugar, is utilised in the manufacture of a spirituous liquor greatly resembling rum in properties. The characteristic odour and taste of the liquor are mainly due to the presence of ethylic butyrate, and are frequently factitiously communicated to its imitations by the direct addition of this ether or of butyric acid. ”

“ Don’t go on the principle that if a little rum is good more must be better and try to float the fruit in—that would have been hailed as a rank outrage even by Captain Shaddock himself—but just be content to see how potent a little bit of rum can be in good company. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The orator acknowledged the fault, but laid it upon the rum, and then endeavoured to excuse the rum by saying: "The Great Spirit, who made all things, made everything for some use; and whatever he designed anything for, that use it should always be put to. Now, when he had made rum, he said: 'Let this be for the Indians to get drunk with.' And it must be so."
"And, indeed, if it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for the cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 came first, then beads, blue, crimson, white and black, and of various sizes, then jack-knives and daggers, white-iron whistles, a drum of large dimensions, a concertina, and a pair of brass lacquered tongs. These last two gifts were the best fun of all, for King ’Ngaloo, squatting in the middle of his tent floor with his wives all round him or near him, would sip rum and play the concertina time about. ”

“ Chemistry seems to agree with the temperance society, that wine, beer, brandy, gin, whiskey, and rum are alcohol and water, mixed in different proportions, and with some slight differences of flavoring and coloring matter. In all these drinks, teetotalers maintain, alcohol is power, the other ingredients being mere dilution and flavoring. Wine, they assure us, is alcohol and water flavored with grapes; beer is alcohol and water flavored with malt and hops; Bourbon whiskey is alcohol and water flavored with corn. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ When near the beach, the last, who is their head man, with much ceremony pours a few drops of rum on the water, and a great deal more down his throat, after which he very vehemently harangues, first I suppose the demon of the water to whom the rum was offered, and then his crew, cheering them for their work. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A day's rations in the trenches consists of quite a variety of commodities. First thing in the winter morning we have that controversial blind, rum. We get a "tot" which is about equal to a tablespoonful. It is not compulsory, and no man need take it unless he wishes. This is not the time or place to discuss the temperance question, but our commanders and the army surgeons believe that rum as a medicine, as a stimulant, is necessary to the health of the soldier, therefore the rum is issued. ”

“ Now hear me.—See, my friend! when I come to this place with my skins and peltry to trade, the people are kind; they give me plenty of good victuals to eat, and pay me in money, or whatever I want, and no one says a word to me about drinking rum—neither do I ask for it! When I come to your place with my peltry, all call to me: 'Come, Thomas! here's rum, drink heartily, drink! ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am astonished at you, good folks. Not a mechanic or a laborer goes to work for a merchant, but he carries home a bottle of rum. Not a load of wood comes to town, but a gallon bottle is tied to the cart stake to be filled with rum. ”

“ As the vapor passes through the tube, it cools and drops out at the end into the worm-tub, changed into a liquid stronger in alcohol than that from which it was drawn or distilled.
In this way gin is made from beer, brandy from wine, and rum from fermented molasses. These are very strong drinks, and only hard drinkers like them. But very few people begin by taking these; they first learn to like alcohol by drinking cider, beer, or wine, and end with gin, whiskey, or rum when they have become drunkards. ”

“ Rum shrub is the kind in the greatest demand, and that having a slight preponderance of the orange flavour is the most esteemed. If wholly flavoured with lemon it is apt to acquire a kind of ‘dead’ or ‘musty’ flavour by long keeping. The substitution of a few gallons of brandy for a portion of the rum, or the addition, after racking, of about 1 oz. each of bruised bitter almonds, cloves, and cassia, the peels of about 2 dozen oranges, and a ‘thread’ of the essences of ambergris and vanilla, render it delicious. ”