An interesting piece I am sure many of you have already seen but here it is anyway... The American Encyclopedia (1830 edition) thus described drinking customs in colonial times: "A fashion at the South was to take a glass of whiskey, flavored with mint, soon after waking; and so conducive to health was this nostrum esteemed that no sex, and scarcely any age, were deemed exempt from its application. At eleven o'clock, while mixtures, under various peculiar names-sling, toddy, flip, etc.-solicited the appetite at the bar of the common tippling-shop, the offices of professional men and counting rooms dismissed their occupants for a half hour to regale themselves at a neighbor's or a coffee-house with punch, hot or cold, according to the season; and females or valetudinarians, courted an appetite with medicated rum, disguised under the chaste names of "Hexham's Tinctures" or "Stoughton's Elixir." The dinner hour arrived . . . whiskey and water curiously flavored with apples, or brandy and water, introduced the feast; whiskey or brandy and water helped it through; and whiskey or brandy without water secured its safe digestion, not to be used in any more formal manner than for the relief of occasional thirst or for the entertainment of a friend, until the last appeal should be made to them to secure a sound night's sleep. Rum, seasoned with cherries, protected against the cold; rum, made astringent with peach-nuts, concluded the repast at the confectioner's; rum, made nutritious with milk, prepared for the maternal office. . . . No doubt there were numbers who did not use ardent spirits, but it was not because they were not perpetually in their way. . . . The friend who did not testify his welcome, and the employer who did not provide bountifully of them for his help, was held niggardly, and there was no special meeting, not even of the most formal or sacred kind, where it was considered indecorous, scarcely any place where it was not thought necessary, to produce them. . . ." Excerpted from Herbert Asbury's book: "The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition" Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY 1950 -------------------------- Steve Powell http://www.bluemoon.net/~spowell