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I. PREAMBULARY
D
URING what facetious American newspaper column–
ists sometimes referred to as the Period of the
Great Drought-that is to say, during the days of the
Noble Experiment-the art of mixing cocktails as known
and practiced up to
1919
lapsed into a sort of desuetude,
even if that could not be descrjbed as "innocuous" or even
as mnox1ous.
In
those larger times ,when legal liquor could be had
more or less freely in tHis country, if one had the price,
or was fortunate enough to be declared in by some host
standing treat, new drinks owed their invention either to
unusually enterprising barmen, or to customers gifted with
imagination and longing for new savors and flavors or,
possibly, the inspiration was attributable to what they had
already drunk. Here and there one knew so'me amateur
experimenter whose chief indoor sport was putting together
new and sometimes weird and even terrifying concoctions
and trying the result upon his friends. During the decade
and a half preceding the .Great War, "Have you tried
this one?" was almost as frequent a prelude to something
as "Have you heard this one?"
.
The war in Europe definitely diminished creative ac–
tivities in the cocktail line. From London we heard that
Britishers, drawn into the combat, had taken to drinking
champagne, and were even being weaned away from their
Scotch. When the A.E.F. discovered France, a simul–
taneous discovery was made of the wines of the country,
I