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The BonVivant's Companion
cocktails
DANIEL WEBSTER
Websterwas majesticin his consumptionof liquor as in every
thingelse. Parton in his Essay speaks of seeing Webster at a public
dinner, "with a bottle of Madeira under his yellowwaistcoat, and
looking like Jove."
Josiah Quincy describes Webster's grief at the burning of his
house because of the loss of half a pipe of Madeira. It is said that
Websterwent fishing the day before hewas to deliverhiswelcome
to Lafayette, and got drunk. As he sat on the bank, he suddenly
drew from the water a large fish, and in his majestic voice said:
"Welcome, illustrious stranger, to our shores." The next day his
friends who went fishing with him were electrified to hear him
begin his speech to Lafayette with the same words.
The history of rum and its byproducts—politics, piracy, romance,
revolution and the introduction of slavery to North America—is prac
tically the history of any West Indian island. Rum is made from
molasses, a canesugar product, or directly from the sugar (as in Cuba
and SantoDomingo) and is a species of molasses brandy, pure white
until it achieves a goldencolor from beingagedin charred barrels, like
Scotchwhiskey. In the old days, they used to chuck in bits of rawmeat,
old shoe leather, and practically anything else that was handy, to give
the rum a richer flavor (this practice, fortunately, has been discon
tinued, though in Jamaica, where they like their rum heavy, they still
use the old iron pots and the "wild fermentation," long since discon
tinued elsewhere). Nobody canbequite sureof the originof the name;
the most plausible suggestion is that it derives from the last syllable of
the Latinword "saccharum," or sugar, fromwhich the articleismade.
In "Treasure Island," you remember, the "seafaring manwith oneleg"
was always singing a songbeginning "Fifteen men on the dead man's
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