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THE BON VIVant's COMPANION
his researches in the field of the cocktail,Jerry Thomas's host
of admirers invested him with the honorable, if honorary,
title of Professor, by which he was thereafter known, and
which he carried with becoming dignity through the re
mainder of his earthly pilgrimage. Thus he fulfilled one of
the ambitions which his father had expressed for him as he
lay,a helpless little one,in the cradle of the New Haven cot
tage. But the church, ever an obstacle to human progress,
failed to recognize his genius.
It was not only as a scientist and beverage dispenser that
Professor Thomas deserves a monument and the plaudits
which are now wasted upon generals, bishops, movie actors,
channel swimmers and aviators,for his interests were numer
ous and his fame in other lines was great; in many different
ways,indeed, he lent force and direction to the cultural ad
vance of the nation. He was a pioneer minstrel showman of
the Pacific Coast,and later owned a music hall in New York
wherein Lew Dockstader began the career which was to make
him the most celebrated minstrel man of his time; and he
sponsored the first public exhibition of Thomas Nast's car
toons, and did much to popularize the work of that famous
artist. And he also achieved renown as a collector; he owned
more than three hundred gourds,of every conceivable shape
and size, the finest and most important group of these natu
ral curiosities in the United States, if not in the world. In
deed, the collection may well have been unique. Moreover,
Professor Thomas was an author whose works have been
sadly neglected by the critics, even by the high-powered,
super-intellectuals among them who possess the occult power
of finding things in a book that the writer never heard of.
These giants customarily sing the praises of realism, yet
they have persistently ignored the product of one of the few
men who were ever able to make the real even more so,
and who at the same time could take a frightened,trembling
wretch and by the skillful application of a cocktail,a cobbler,
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