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INTRODUCTION
In these decayed and evangelical times, when drinking has
reverted to a savage guzzling of liquid dynamite, the name
of Jerry Thomas arouses no answering spark of manhood
from the craven victims of bootleg liquor or the cowed and
beaten slaves who labor in the gloomy galleys of the Anti-
Saloon League. But to the ancients who weep beside the bier
of a lost art it brings back beautiful memories of golden
fizzes and stimulating juleps, of cobblers, slings and san-
garees. For Jerry Thomas was the greatest drink mixer of
his age; his praises were sung by enlightened and Christian
men from the Gulf of Mexico to the barren coast of Maine,
and from the Golden Gate to Broadway.Aye,even in Europe
he was recognized as a master craftsman; he visited Liver
pool, Southampton,London and Paris in 1859, bearing with
him his magnificent set of solid silver bar utensils constructed
at a cost of $4,000 for his own personal use, and astounded
the effete drinkers of the Old World with the variety and ex
tent of his virtuosity.
It was Jerry Thomas— rise, please — who invented those
celebrated cold weather beverages which have come down to
us as the Blue Blazer and the Tom and Jerry, the former a
powerful concoction of burning whiskey and boiling water
which, if properly employed, would render the hot water
bottle obsolete. And it was Jerry Thomas who, a few years
before the Civil War,gave the aid and encouragement of his
genius to the cocktail,then a meek and lowly beverage pining
for recognition and appreciation,and by self-sacrificing work
in the laboratory raised it to its rightful place among the
drinks. A perfect flood of new mixtures soon showered upon
a delighted world, and the Metropolitan Hotel at Prince
Street and Broadway, in New York, where Jerry Thomas
was Principal Bartender in the days when the metropolis
was the scene of the soundest drinking on earth, became the
first great cocktail house. As a mark of gratitude for his in
vention of the Tom and Jerry and the Blue Blazer, and for
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