20 / 184
Ill.
BAPTISMAL
T
HE
visitor to a speakeasy, during the recent Period
of Stress, may have lacked nothing in abundance
of supply; but he was confronted by decided circumscrip–
tion in variety. Had one who knew breat'hed to dispensers
of dreadful drinks that masked under names once guar–
antees of superior content, and harmless, if potent, ac–
celerators of appetite and good feeling-taken in modera–
tion-some figures as well as facts about the quality and
variety of alcoholic dispensation at the Old Waldorf in its
real prime, he would probably have been greeted by a
scouting or scornful, "Aw, what are ya givin' me?" In–
deed, had you told almost anybody who hadn't the facts
before him the number of kinds of fancy drinks Old Wal–
dorf barmen knew how to concoct, and did concoct, they
would have put you down as a liar and probably said it
aloud.
Those three hundred or so varieties of what was once
the great American drink, one which carried the name of
our people all over the world; those over four hundred
more varieties of picklers than the most ambitious Amer–
ican pickler of his age was ever able to advertise-and
which pickled more people-deserve, with their formulas
1
to live in history. Their nomenclature belongs to it, not
only as part of our national chronicles, but as an index to
certain social, industrial and artistic achievements of an
age.
Brushing aside such mythological, ornithological, theo-
20