Part 20

Though mild, these drinks were intoxicating. One could "get fox'd e'en with foolish matheglin." Old James Howel says, "metheglin does stupefy more than any other liquor if taken immoderately and keeps a humming in the brain which made one say he loved not metheglin because he was wont to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive."

Bradford tells of backsliders from Merrymount who "abased themselves disorderly with drinking too much stronge drinke aboard the Freindshipp." This strong drink was metheglin, of which two hogsheads were to be delivered at Plymouth. But after it was transferred to wooden "flackets" in Boston, these Friendship merrymakers contrived to "drinke it up under the name leackage" till but six gallons of the metheglin arrived at Plymouth.

"Cyder famed" was made at an early date from the fruitful apple-trees so faithfully planted by Endicott, Blackstone, and other settlers. Cider was cheap enough; Josselyn wrote, "I have had at the tap houses of Boston an ale-quart of cyder spiced and sweetened with sugar, for a groat."

This was not the New England nectar or Passada which he praised so highly and which was thus made--

"Take of Malligo Raisins, stamp them and put milk to them and put them to a Hippocras Bag and let it drain out of itself and put a quantity of this with a spoonful or two of Syrup of Clove Gilly-flowers into every bottle when you bottle your Syder, and your Planter will have a liquor that exceeds Passada, the Nectar of the Country."

Cider was made at first by pounding the apples by hand in wooden mortars; sometimes the pomace was pressed in baskets. Rude mills were then formed with a hollowed log, and a heavy weight or maul on a spring-board. Cider soon became the common drink of the people, and it was made in vast quantities. In 1671 five hundred hogsheads were made of one orchard's produce. One village of forty families made three thousand barrels in 1721. Bennet wrote in 1740, "Cider being cheap and the people used to it they do not encourage malt liquors. They pay about three shillings a barrel for cider." It was freely used even by the children at breakfast, as well as at dinner, up to the end of the first quarter of the present century, when many zealous followers so eagerly embraced the new temperance reform that they cut down whole orchards of thriving apple-trees, conceiving no possibility of the general use of the fruit for food instead of drink.

Charles Francis Adams says that "to the end of John Adams's life a large tankard of hard cider was his morning draught before breakfast."

Cider was supplied in large amounts to students at college at dinner and "bever," being passed in two two-quart tankards from hand to hand down the commons table. It was given liberally to all travellers and wanderers who chanced to stop at the farmer's door; to all workmen and farm laborers; and an "Indian barrel," whose contents were for free gift to every tramp Indian or squaw, was found in many a farmer's cellar.

A traveller in Maine just after the Revolution said that their cider was purified by the frost, colored with corn, and looked and tasted like Madeira.

Beverige also was drunk by the colonists. This name was applied to various mild and watery drinks. In the West Indies the juice of the sugar-cane mixed with water was so called. In Devonshire, water which had been pressed through the lees of a cider-mill was called beverige. In other parts of England water, cider, and spices formed beverige. In New England the concoction varied, but was uniformly innocuous and weak--the colonial prototype of our modern "temperance drinks." In many country houses a summer drink of water flavored with molasses and ginger was called beverige. The advertisement in the Boston News Letter, August 16th, 1711, of the sale of the captured Neptune with her lading, at the warehouse of Andrew Fanueil, had "Wine, Vinegar and Beveridge" on the list. This must have been stronger stuff than molasses and water, to have been worth barrelling and sending across the water.

Switchel was a drink similar to beverige, but when served out to sailors was strengthened by a little vinegar and rum. The name was commonly used in New Hampshire and central Massachusetts. Ebulum was made of the juices of the elder and juniper berries mixed with ale and spices.

Perry was made to some extent from pears, and was advertised for sale in the Boston News Letter, and one traveller told of "peachy" made from peaches. Spruce and birch beer were brewed by mixing a decoction of sassafras, birch, or spruce bark with molasses and water, or by boiling the twigs in maple sap, or by boiling together pumpkin and apple-parings, water, malt, and roots. Many curious makeshifts were resorted to in the early days. One old song boasted

"Oh we can make liquor to sweeten our lips Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree chips."

Fiercer liquors were not lacking. Aqua-vitae, a general name for strong waters, was brought over in large quantities during the seventeenth century, and sold for about three shillings a gallon. Cider was distilled into cider brandy, or apple-jack; and when, by 1670, molasses had come into port in considerable quantity through the West India trade, the forests of New England supplied plentiful and cheap fuel to convert it into "rhum, a strong water drawn from the sugar cane." In a manuscript description of Barbadoes, written in 1651, we read: "The chief fudling they make in this island is Rumbullion alias Kill Divil--a hot hellish and terrible liquor." It was called in some localities Barbadoes liquor, and by the Indians "ahcoobee" or "ockuby," a word of the Norridgewock tongue. John Eliot spelled it "rumb," and Josselyn called it plainly "that cussed liquor, Rhum, rumbullion, or kill-devil." It went by the latter name and rumbooze everywhere, and was soon cheap enough. Increase Mather said, in 1686, "It is an unhappy thing that in later years a Kind of Drink called Rum has been common among us. They that are poor, and wicked too, can for a penny or twopence make themselves drunk." Burke said, at a later date, "The quantity of spirits which they distil in Boston from the molasses they import is as surprising as the cheapness at which they sell it, which is under two shillings a gallon; but they are more famous for the quantity and cheapness than for the excellency of their rum." In 1719, and fifty years later, New England rum was worth but three shillings a gallon, while West India rum was worth but twopence more. New England distilleries quickly found a more lucrative way of disposing of their "kill-devil" than by selling it at such cheap rates. Ships laden with barrels of rum were sent to the African coast, and from thence they returned with a most valuable lading--negro slaves. Along the coast of Africa New England rum quite drove out French brandy.

The Irish and Scotch settlers knew how to make whiskey from rye and wheat, and they soon learned to manufacture it from barley and potatoes, and even from the despised Indian corn.

Not content with their own manufactured liquors, the thirsty colonists imported strong waters, gin and aniseseed cordial from Holland, and wine from Spain, Portugal, and the Canaries. Of these, fiery Madeiras were the favorite of all fashionable folk and often each glass of wine was strengthened by a liberal dash of brandy. Bennet wrote, in 1740, of Boston society, "Madeira wine and rum punch are the liquors they drink in common." Though "spiced punch in bowls the Indians quaffed" in 1665, I do not know of the Oriental mixed drink in New England till 1682, when John Winthrop writes of the sale of a punch-bowl. In 1686 John Dunton had more than one "noble bowl of punch," during his visit to New England. The word punch was from the East Indian word pauch, meaning five. S. M. (who was probably Samuel Mather) sent these lines to Sir Harry Frankland in 1757, with the gift of a box of lemons:

"You know from Eastern India came The skill of making punch as did the name. And as the name consists of letters five, By five ingredients is it kept alive. To purest water sugar must be joined, With these the grateful acid is combined. Some any sours they get contented use, But men of taste do that from Tagus choose. When now these three are mixed with care Then added be of spirit a small share. And that you may the drink quite perfect see Atop the musky nut must grated be."

Every buffet of people of fashion contained a punch-bowl, every dinner was prefaced by a bowl of punch, which was passed from hand to hand and drunk from without intervening glasses. J. Crosby, at the Box of Lemons, in Boston, sold for thirty years lime juice and shrub and lemons, and sour oranges and orange juice (which some punch tasters preferred to lemon juice), to flavor Boston punches.

Double and "thribble" bowls of punch were commonly served, holding respectively two and three quarts each, and many existing bills show what large amounts were drunk. Governor Hancock gave a dinner to the Fusileers at the Merchants' Club, in Boston, in 1792. As eighty dinners were paid for I infer there were eighty diners. They drank one hundred and thirty-six bowls of punch, besides twenty-one bottles of sherry and a large quantity of cider and brandy. An abstract of an election dinner to the General Court of Massachusetts in 1769, showed two hundred diners, and seventy-two bottles of Madeira, twenty-eight bottles of Lisbon wine, ten of claret, seventeen of port, eighteen of porter, fifteen double bowls of punch and a quantity of cider. The clergy were not behind the military and the magistrates. In the record of the ordination of Rev. Joseph McKean, in Beverly, Mass., in 1785, these items are found in the tavern-keeper's bill:

30 Bowles of Punch before the People went to meeting 3 80 people eating in the morning at 16d 6 10 bottles of wine before they went to meeting 1 10 68 dinners at 3s 10 4 44 bowles of punch while at dinner 4 8 18 bottles of wine 2 14 8 bowles of Brandy 1 2 Cherry Rum 1 10 6 people drank tea 9d

The six mild tea-drinkers and their economical beverage seem to put a finishing and fairly comic touch to this ordination bill. When we read such renderings of accounts we think it natural that Baron Reidesel wrote of New England inhabitants, "most of the males have a strong passion for strong drink, especially rum and other alcoholic beverages." John Adams said, "if the ancients drank wine as our people drink rum and cider it is no wonder we hear of so many possessed with devils."

The cost of these various drinks was thus given about Revolutionary times in Bristol, R. I.:

"Nip of Grog 6d Dubel bole of Tod 2s 9d Dubel bole of punch 8s Nip of punch 1s Brandi Sling 8d"

Flip was a vastly popular drink, and continued to be so for a century and a half. I find it spoken of as early as 1690. It was made of home-brewed beer, sweetened with sugar, molasses, or dried pumpkin, and flavored with a liberal dash of rum, then stirred in a great mug or pitcher with a red-hot loggerhead or hottle or flip-dog, which made the liquor foam and gave it a burnt bitter flavor.

Landlord May, of Canton, Mass., made a famous brew thus: he mixed four pounds of sugar, four eggs, and one pint of cream and let it stand for two days. When a mug of flip was called for, he filled a quart mug two-thirds full of beer, placed in it four great spoonfuls of the compound, then thrust in the seething loggerhead, and added a gill of rum to the creamy mixture. If a fresh egg were beaten into the flip the drink was called "bellows-top," and the froth rose over the top of the mug. "Stone-wall" was a most intoxicating mixture of cider and rum. "Calibogus," or "bogus," was cold rum and beer unsweetened. "Black-strap" was a mixture of rum and molasses. Casks of it stood in every country store, a salted and dried codfish slyly hung alongside--a free lunch to be stripped off and eaten, and thus tempt, through thirst, the purchase of another draught of black-strap.

A terrible drink is said to have been popular in Salem--a drink with a terrible name--whistle-belly-vengeance. It consisted of sour household beer simmered in a kettle, sweetened with molasses, filled with brown-bread crumbs and drunk piping hot.

Of course many protests, though chiefly on the ground of wasteful expense, were made, even in ante-temperance days, against the drinking which grew so prevalent with the opening of the eighteenth century. Rev. Andrew Eliot wrote in 1735, "'Tis surprising what prodigious sums are expended for spirituous liquors in this one poor Province--more than a million of our old currency in a year." Dr. Tenney lamented that the taverns of Exeter, N. H., were thronged with people who seldom retired sober. Strenuous but ineffectual efforts were made to "prevent tippling in the forenoon," and between meals; but with little avail. The temperance-reform of our own century came none too soon.

Tea was too high priced in the first half-century of its Occidental use to have been frequently seen in New England. Judge Sewall mentioned it but once in his diary. He drank it at Madam Winthrop's house in 1709 at a Thursday lecture, but he does not note it as a rarity. In 1690, however, when not over-plentiful in old England, Benjamin Harris and Daniel Vernon were licensed to sell it "in publique" in Boston. In 1712 "green and ordinary teas" were advertised in the apothecary's list of Zabdiel Boylston. Bohea tea came in 1713, and in 1715 tea was sold in the coffee-houses. Some queer mistakes were made through the employment of the herb as food. In Salem it was boiled for a long time till bitter, and drunk without milk or sugar; and the tea-leaves were buttered, salted, and eaten. In more than one town the liquid tea was thrown away and the carefully cooked leaves were eaten.