388 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



This rum was the basis not only of " flip," when mixed with 

 beer, molasses, dried pumpkin, and sometimes cream and eggs, 

 and stirred, before serving, with a red-hot poker, but also of 

 punch. This latter, named after an East Indian word meaning 

 five, was concocted with sugar, spices, lemon juice, and water, and 

 was imbibed freely. As early as 1686 we find travelers telling of 

 noble bowls of punch, which were passed from hand to hand before 

 dinner. Double and " thribble " bowls there were also, holding 

 two or three quarts each, and the amounts that our ancestors dis- 

 posed of in those days are staggering. 



For liquor was not only used at dinner and supper parties ; it 

 was taken morning, noon, and night, as a matter of course. The 

 laborer would not work at the harvest, the builders at their 

 trades, without a liberal allowance of rum. It did not matter, 

 either, what class of work they were doing. When the little town 

 of Medfield, early in the last century, " raised " the new meeting 

 house, there were required " four barrels beer, twenty-four gallons 

 West Indian rum, thirty gallons New England rum, thirty-five 

 pounds loaf sugar, twenty-five pounds brown sugar, and four 

 hundred and sixty-five lemons." A house could not be built 

 without liquor being distributed at every stage of the operation, 

 and this practice was not obsolete till well on in this century. 



The clergy, while keeping a strict eye upon the excesses of 

 their parishioners, did not disdain a drop themselves, and their 

 conventions rivaled the dinners of the non-elect. In 1792 Gov- 

 ernor Hancock gave a dinner to the Fusileers at the Merchants' 

 Club in Boston, and for eighty diners there were served one 

 hundred and thirty- six bowls of punch, twenty- one bottles of 

 sherry, and lots of cider and brandy. But a similar bill is pre- 

 served for the refreshments at the ordination of a clergyman at 

 Beverly, Mass., in 1785, and we notice : 



30 Bowles Punch before they went to meeting 3 Os. Qd. 



80 people eating in morning, at 16c? 6 



10 bottles of wine before they went to meeting 1 10 



68 dinners at 30d 10 4 



44 bowles punch while at dinner 4 8 



18 bottles wine 2 14 



8 bowles brandy 1 2 



Cherry Eum 110 



and 6 people drank tea 9 



It would be but useless repetition to discuss the drinking 

 habits of New York and other colonies. It is enough to say that 

 well on into the present century drunkenness was extremely com- 

 mon, and, when people could afford it, a most pardonable and 

 venial offense. It is the pride of our civilization in the present 

 century that, during the last fifty or seventy-five years, the whole 



