Charles Lamb tells in his _Popular Fallacies_ of "Bully Dawson kicked by half the town and half the town kicked by Bully Dawson." This Bully Dawson was a famous punch brewer; his rule was precisely like that of a famous New England landlord, and is worth choosing among a score of rules:--
"The man who sees, does, or thinks of anything else while he is making Punch may as well look for the Northwest Passage on Mutton Hill. A man can never make good punch unless he is satisfied, nay positive, that no man breathing can make better. I can and do make good Punch, because I do nothing else, and this is my way of doing it. I retire to a solitary corner with my ingredients ready sorted; they are as follows, and I mix them in the order they are here written. Sugar, twelve tolerable lumps; hot water, one pint; lemons, two, the juice and peel; old Jamaica rum, two gills; brandy, one gill; porter or stout, half a gill; arrack, a slight dash. I allow myself five minutes to make a bowl in the foregoing proportions, carefully stirring the mixture as I furnish the ingredients until it actually foams; and then Kangaroos! how beautiful it is!"
With this nectar and a toast we may fitly close this chapter. May the grass grow lightly o'er the grave of Bully Dawson, and weigh like lead on the half the town that kicked him!
"Under this tearme of small-drink," wrote an old chronicler, "do I endow such drinks as are of comfort, to quench an honest thirst, not to heat the brain, as one man hath ale, another cider, another metheglin, and one sack." Under this title I also place such tavern and home drinks of colonial times as were not deemed vastly intoxicating; though New England cider might well be ranged very close to New England rum in intoxicating powers.
The American colonists were not enthusiastic water drinkers, and they soon imported malt and established breweries to make the familiar ale and beer of old England. The Dutch patroons found brewing a profitable business in New York, and private families in all the colonies built home brew-houses and planted barley and hops.
In Virginia a makeshift ale was made from maize as early as 1620. George Thorpe wrote that it was a good drink, much preferable to English beer. Governor Berkeley wrote of Virginians a century later:--