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THE BON VIVANT's COMPANION
teacher at Yale, although the Yale boys learned much from
him before he left New Haven to give his message to the
world. Instead, he became simply Jerry Thomas, but for
more than three score years he lived a life of singular useful
ness, and blessed many communities with the abundance of
his service. He was a great artist with a touch of true genius,
and the importance of his influence upon the gentler and
more esthetic aspects of American culture has neither been
properly recognized nor adequately estimated. Indeed, he
lies in an obscure grave, untopped by granite shaft or public
memorial.
Briefly, Jerry Thomas was a bartender. But what a bar
tender! Hisname should not be mentioned in the same breath
with that of the frowsy gorilla who, in these dark days of
Prohibition, may be found lounging behind the bar of a
dingy basement speakeasy, sloshing luke-warm ginger ale
into a dirty glass half-filled with raw alcohol, and then call
ing the unspeakable concoction a drink. Jerry Thomas had
nothing in common with this Volsteadian ape; there is no
more a basis of comparison than there is between Michel
angelo and Bud Fisher, or Dante and Eddie Guest. For
Jerry Thomas was neither frowsy nor a simian; he was an
imposing and lordly figure of a man,portly, sleek and jovial,
yet possessed of immense dignity. A great diamond gleamed
in his shirt front, and a jacket of pure and spotless white
encased his great bulk; and a huge and handsome mustache,
neatly trimmed in the arresting style called walrus, adorned
his lip and lay caressingly athwart his plump and rosy
cheeks. He presented an inspiring spectacle as he leaned
upon the polished mahogany of his bar, amid the gleam of
polished silver and cut glass, and impressively pronounced
the immemorial greeting,"What will it be, gentlemen?"
—a sacred rite which the modern poison slinger has cor
rupted into a swipe at a pine board with a greasy cloth and
a peevish,"Whatcha want, gents? Hooch?"
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