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PREAMBULARY
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the young, not sparing young women. It became "smart"
to affect the speakeasy and to make it a place of assemblage;
and "drunk" and "souse" became humorous rather than
disreputable terms.
But avast with moral discussions! The story has been
written, and we are trying to recover from what
in
effect
was a national spree-with headaches, and sometimes
worse. The fact was that, deprived of legal liquor, we
had embarked, as it were, upon an unknown sea of al–
coholic beverages. ,Thirsts were drowned, rather than
quenched, in "bathtub" or synthetic gin-that or "whiskey"
made from supposedly denat'o/ed wood-alcohol. Fatalities
were frequent. The
c~cktail,
long considered an aid
to
good appetite and digestion and cheer, often proved an
enemy
to
digestion, health, morals and even mind.
In
sum,
the art of drinking, according
to
the tenets of .the long
established American School, was lost, except one found
in Havana, or Nassau, or elsewhere abroad, some veteran
barman whose training and experience qualified him to
compose qrinks in the old, standard American way. The
men employed in speakeasies to mix cocktails and other
drinks as a rule knew nothing about the job and did
not have valid liquors to start with. A "cocktail" was apt
to prove just something with so-called gin in it, or a mix–
ture of two or more of the 'imitations that masked behind
well-known names.
Self-respecting bartenders of the old day-or most of
them-had found other means of ea:rning a living. Some
had emigrated. There were exceptions. Breaking the law
of the land-a frequent avocation for many of us-most
of our social clubs found employment for experienced bar–
men. But rare it was that this particular searcher for truth